Duck and Deer Hunting November 22

Karen and I flew back to Indiana form Boston about 6:00 PM with a lay over in Cleveland that gave us a chance to experience snow storms and delays. We got back home about 12:30 AM.
Blake called earlier in the evening to plan a duck hunting trip for early Saturday morning at 5:30. So I got four hours of sleep and then up and at 'em again.

I got to Blake's we loaded decoys and all the rest of our stuff in Blake's truck and headed for the lake. Within an hour off loading the truck loading up the boat rowing across the lake, and setting the decoys we saw the first touches of sunlight began to light up the surface of the water. Watching the sun rise is a pretty sight.

After a while we started to see some ducks fly, and we had three separate groups that came into our decoys. Blake and Skler each got a mallard out of the first flock, I got a mallard out of the next flock and Skyler and Blake both hit a Merganser from the final group that came through.

By late morning Blake asked Skyler if he was ready to head in. Since Blake and I were both getting a little cold and we knew that we still had some cold work to do we were glad when he answered back yes! We picked up and bagged the decoys and loaded the rest of the gear and rowed back across the lake. Everything got loaded back on the truck and we finally headed to the house for lunch.



Back at the house I took a few shots of the mighty hunter with the days take.

In the afternoon we worked on covering Blake's pontoon and putting a flue up on a space heater that Blake put in his garage. We suddenly realized that it was getting a littel late so we quickly started getting ready to go deer hunting. This involved changing to a different kind of gear and hiking through fileds and into the woods. Since we were going to be hunting in different areas of the farm Blake and Skyler headed out first. Within 10 minutes of getting to my stand I heard a shot from the direction where Blake and Skyler were hunting. I called Blake on the cell phone and found out that Skyler had gotten a nice sized doe.

We all continued to hunt until dark and then started tracking the deer. It took a while to get the deer to a spot to do the field dressing and then hiked back to the truck and finally got the deer loaded and back at Blake's hung up until it could be checked in the next day.

Sunday afternoon I went out deer hunting again saw a couple of small deer but decided to let them pass. I headed home just after dark and Blake and family over for Duck and chicken shiskabob on the grill. It was a good weekend.

Boston in the Fall October 19-21

On Tuesday afternoon November 18th Karen and I headed to Boston Where I was to attend a conference. We stayed in an older hotel fairly close to the downtown area on Exeter Street just a block south of Copley square. The location turned out to be very good in terms of being about to get around using public transportation. The normal temperature for Boston this year was 45-50 with lows of 36 degrees. While we were there it never got up to 36 degrees.









I spent most of Wednesday, Thrusday and part of Friday at the World Trade and Exibition Center. Karen wandered around Boston most of the days. On Wednesday night we went to Faneuil Hall and had dinner at Union Oyster. I had fresh clams, and oysters on the half shell clam chowder and mussels. Karen had Crab cakes. Thursday night we walked down Newberry street and had dinner in an old restrant called Charleys did a little window shopping and enjoyed the Christmas decorations and lighting.









On Friday after the conference Karen and I had some time before our flight left to do just a little site seeing. We walked down Newberry street to Boston Commons and back on Commonwealth Avenue to the Hotel. We stopped in several galleries, had some lunch and got to see some interesting things.




We got to the airport via subway and shuttle bus which was quite an experience with two heavy suitcases and a couple of backpacks. The flight back to Fort Wayne had a stop in Cleveland and some delays because of a fairly good amount of snow. We finely got home about 12:30 Saturday morning

Deerless Hunting November 15-16, 2008

Firearms season for deer opened on Saturday November 15, 2008. Since Blake got his deer during the archery season he planned to sit with Skyler and help him tag a deer. Saturday morning began as promised 20 mph wind from the northwest 38 derees and raining. Perfect for duck and goose hunting, not so good for deer. Friday night with GPS aerial photos Blake and I planned out where we would go in the morning to make sure we had good safe sites to hunt. We have hunted the same farm for nearly 20 years so we pretty well know every feature. Blake and Skyler would hunt from the east end of the esker http://www.fettes.com/cairngorms/esker.htm and I would hunt south of the set-asside in behind the big cottonwood. Because of the heavy rain and wind we decided to use ground blinds rather than tree stands.

Blake and Skyler came to pick me up a little before 6:00 AM. We had pretty well loaded and unloaded equipment, trudged down the farm lane, through the fields, and to the edge of the woods ready to set up by 6:30. The arrangement was that when Blake and Skyler were ready to head out Blake would call by cell phone. My morning was a combination of wondering what any self respecting deer would would be doing out on a day like this and trying to spot a a deer that might not have noticed how miserable it was.

At about 9:30 I thought it was about time for Blake to call and that's when I noticed that my phone was not on my belt like I thought it should have been. Since I had not seen a single sign of a deer and since I was wondering what had happened to my phone I decided to head back to the truck, expecting to find it in the grass near where I had pulled on my hunting gear earlier in the morning. At the truck I was disappointed to find no sign of the phone. I decided to head back out to the woods, trying to retrace by steps exactly and watching the ground more diligently. Still no phone. I decided to head to a place where I would be on the path of Blake's and Skyler's retreat from the woods, find a place out of the wind and rain and wait. In a few minutes I spotted a pair of blaze orange hats headed toward me through the brush.

They had only seen one deer all morning and it was not up to Skyler's standard for his first deer (a six pointer with two points on one side and four on the other). Not exactly what you would want as your first trophy.

"So had you tried to call my phone" I asked. "Yes, but it went straight to voice mail" he said. "Bummer" I said. I had hoped to use the old, trying calling my phone and I will try to see if I can hear it ring, trick.

As we pulled down the lane in front of our house there it was, in the driveway, my phone covered with mud and it looked like it had been only driven over by the rear tires of Blake's truck. I wiped off as much of the mud as I could, opened the lid, with sort of a grinding sound and notice nothing familiar was happening. I took it into the house and for some stange reason when I pugged it into a charger it miraculously came to life. Tough little critters those cell phones. Some day I might write about my experience with a cell phone and sailing, but this is about hunting.

It rained most of the day Saturday, we went back out into the woods in the middle of the afternoon and where disappointed to find no deer again.

Sunday Afternoon I headed out into the woods early in the afternoon thinking that since it had quit raining and since the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard that maybe the deer would begin to move around a bit. I worked my way back into the woods to a place where I thought I would at least have a chance to see deer. I got to the tree stand plenty early, the sun was peeking through the clouds a little. I happened to bring a camera so I took a few shots of the area where I hunt.

About 5:00 PM just when the deer should be moving out of the heavy cover into the open clearings a bit, my phone buzzed. It turned out to be the IPFW police wanting to know if I have given someone permission to strip copper wire off of some light poles we were storing for reuse. Once that converation was over I realized that had a deer been at the edge of the clearing he would have gotten boared by my conversation with the police and would have just gone another way. So at the end of the second day of hunting all the deer in the woods were safe and healthy, the copper thief is in custody, I got some exercise, and got to enjoy the great outdoors.

Duckless Hunting

Duck hunting in our part of the country has to be done for the pure joy of being out in nature, often when the temperature and humidity is not at a comfortable level. Usually it is down right miserable. In the fall of 2008 I have been on four or five expeditions into the "wilds" and so far all the ducks are safe and the shotgun is still clean. Hunting ducks and or geese usually involves hauling a whole truck load of stuff to the swamp/marsh/lake/field about two hours before sun up. Decoys in large bags, usually three to five bags, with three to four dozen decoys, a couple of shotguns, shotgun shells, a boat, ores, seats, life jackets, wadders dry clothes, extra jackets, gloves, duck calls, snacks, and of course coffee are all loaded up and eventually distributed in some natural looking way that would not frighten ducks. Hiding from the ducks is important enough that you get to buy lots of clothing that is supposed to make you blend in to the surrounding vegetation. Of course that doesn't really work out that well most of the time.
Then there is the vigilance, making sure those ducks don't sneek up on you.

Finally there is always the reason for why you need the extra dry clothes. Note that our friend Ryan is sitting on the end of his sunken canoe wringing water out of his socks after righting his canoe and before he has bailed the water out. The canoe is the thing in front of him holding up the shot gun that has about four inches of freeboard. Ryan's trusty canine Brody is sitting on a muskrat hutch complaining about being wet too. Oh, for the pure joy of it all.

Heading home October 19

Oct 19

The Last day in Australia. We are heading home. We packed up all our luggage including the extra duffle bag we bought to carry stuff we collected along the way. At 9:30 Sunday morning we are headed for the airport. Our plane was scheduled to leave in the early afternoon but we wanted to make a couple of quick stops along the way.

We stopped at Manly, one of the many beach communities we had visited while in Australia, to pick up some T-shirts and to walk along the beach for a while before we head back to the U.S. There was a open-air craft market going on so we browsed through the tables a bit and then went for a walk along the beech.
Eventually we had to actually leave and head to the airport.One last look at what we were leaving behind.
For one brief moment there was a mixed feeling that we might not get to the airport in time and would have to stay in Australia a bit longer, but the traffic eventually cleared and we had to go on to the airport anyway.
We got to the Airport checked out baggage and had an emotional good bye with Clarice and Jon.


We got on the plane and took off about 3:30 PM Australian time. The flight took us up and over Sydney and gave us some pretty good views of the beaches to the north. We flew right over Manly beach where we had been just a couple of hours before. If you look closely you can almost see the people still on the beach.

It was about a 13 hour, bumpy flight to LAX. We had to clear customs in LA so we had to go through baggage claim and then re-send our baggage on for the rest of the trip. We had about a two hour layover in LA. We had a four hour flight to Chicago and another two hour layover in Chicago plus a delay in departing a half hour flight to Fort Wayne landing about 11:15 Fort Wayne time, and not quite an hour recovering our baggage and getting out of the airport. We got to the lake about 1:30 AM on the 20th. We traveled about 24 hours between 3:30 PM and 11:30 PM on Sunday. It was a long day.

I will conclude with this note. I took about 7500 digital pictures and Jon added a few hundered to fill in things I had not picked up. We were gone about 32 days, and about 4 or 5 of those days were pretty well consumed by traveling. I put 15-20 pictures on each days report of the trip so there may be 300-400 pictures reflected in this mid September to mid October journal. I hope this gives a small glimpse of what we saw and did.

Jay