Snowy Limit

Over Thanksgiving week, I had some decent duck hunting success as cold weather swept through the Northwest.  On Monday as I was driving to work it began to snow.  This was not in the forecast but I welcomed it because it always seems to bring more ducks our way.  By the time I left work we had 4-5 inches accumulated and the roads were a mess.  I was excited because Tuesday is my day off and I knew that the hunting would be good.  I had plans to go to my favorite spot about an hour away but decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to go that far alone with all the snow on the roads.  All of my friends were working and I had no one to go with so I decided that I would go to a spot that is normally not all that great  but is only 5 or so miles out of town.  Early the next morning I got to my spot, grabbed my gear, and began to hike out to where I was going to hunt.  I had expected to see other people there but it seems that the weather scared them away because there was no one.  My plan was to hide in a thicket of tall grass on the edge of the water and use that as my blind.  Just as I was getting to the grass a huge flock of approximately 200 ducks erupted from out of it!  While I was disappointed that I had scared them away, I figured that if that was were the ducks were sitting then I had picked the right thicket of grass!  I got settled in and still had about 30 min until it was light enough to shoot.  Throughout that 30 min I was constantly hearing ducks quacking.  When it finally became light enough to shoot there were ducks all around me.  I had several flocks that flew by but I couldn't shoot because they were flying so close together that I was worried I would hit more than my limit if I shot.  I saw a large group of ducks just off the shore about 100 yards away and decided that I would sneak up on them.  All I had was foot-tall grass but by staying really low and belly crawling really slow I was able to get within 10 yards of them without them seeing me.  It was an amazing feeling/sight to observe 150-200 ducks from that range.  There was a good mixture of wigeon, pintail, and mallards.  I laid there and just enjoyed watching them for a while and then finally came to knees.  As they flushed I picked a nice drake mallard out of a small group that had broken away from the large mass of ducks, and cleanly folded him.  When I shot him three other ducks in the group fell as well, a hen widgeon, a drake widgeon, and a hen pintail.  I then picked out another drake mallard and dropped him before the flock got out of range.  It took one more shot to finish the hen pintail on the water.  With three shots fired I already had 5 ducks down.  The wind was blowing them away from me and I had to use my float tube to retrieve them.  That was great until I pulled it out of the water after I was done and the 15 degree weather froze all of the water to it.  It was HEAVY to lug back to the car!  After retrieving my ducks I settled back in.  I had several groups flying around but with only two more duck left to fill my limit I couldn't risk a shot that might down more than two birds.  After waiting a few minutes a pair of wigeon came in.  One more shot and they were both dead and I had my limit of 7 in under 30 min with 4 shells.  With the cold temperatures they was all flying really close together and each shot was killing multiple birds.  At some point in the hunt some water had splashed on my gun and it had a nice sheath of ice covering it.  I picked up all of my birds and hauled all of my heavy, ice-covered equipment back to the Jeep, and headed home to celebrate.