Pintail Farms

Written by Rockie Martin - Pintail Farms

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

The hunt started off with one of the soldiers not being able to make the trip. We sure wished it could have worked out for him to be there. However, I was concerned about the hunt because everything on the place was frozen each morning for the past few days. The hunting was very slow. I was not sure if we lost birds that went North or South. I did know one thing though. We were not seeing a lot of birds moving around during the day but after shooting time in the afternoons we have been having thousands and thousands of Teal coming into Pintail and using it as a roost. I also saw that we had a chance for rain. Well Mark got to the lodge around 12:00. We got him settled in at the lodge and took him on tour of the lodge. We had been getting rain showers on and off through out the morning. As Mark and I looked out the windows from the lodge I notice the rain got alittle more consistent. We started seeing birds moving so, at 12:30 we geared up and headed to the blind. I also had Terry Griffin one of my members of the club come along. We pulled up to the blind on the max and about 150 birds or so got up from the lake we were going to hunt known as Bare Lake. As we were putting the gear in the blind we had at least 300 to 400 Teal trying to land in the decoys while we were getting set up. I got everything unloaded and went and parked the max. As I walked to the blind I could see one group after another group after another group. Mark could not believe the birds we were seeing. 90 percent of the birds were Teal. My plan was paying off. We did see some Pintails and Mallards as well. I got in the blind and we got loaded up. Within 5 minutes or so we had our first bunch come in. We got 1 of them. A mallard drake and hen came in and we had a group of 100 or so working us so we held off on the mallards while they lit in the decoys waiting for everything to come in but all at once everything bugged out. I told Mark it is like that sometimes. However, the action was as fast as it gets. There was lots of shells fired and everyone had a limit by 4:00. We had group after group after group come in of Teal up to 300 to 400 in a group. We ended up with 13 Greenwing Teal and a Spooney Drake and Hen. The Spooney Drake was one the prettiest I have seen. It is now at the Taxidermist for Marks first mount. Thank you for the rain. It always bring the teal in this way. If it starts raining in the morning then you always want to get in the blind. It is nice to be done early especially if it is cold and rainy. So, we went to the lodge and took off our wet cold gear. We warmed up by the fire place and talked about the awesome hunt. We had a good meal and watched a very funny movie called “Wild Hogs”. If you have not seen this you must see it for a good laugh. Mark is now back in the states and he helps with funerals of soldiers. He got a call at the lodge last night and unfortunately, had to cut the hunt short at 8:00am this morning to be back to do a funeral for a soldier. Mark and I got 3 Teal and 1 Ring neck this morning. Should have had close to a limit but we had to leave the blind at 8:00am to get him on the road. As we were saying our good byes we were watching the birds coming into the lake we hunted but it was time for Mark to leave to get back and do his job. This was a pleasure for me to do. Mark is a wonderful person. It works out they we both grew up 30 miles apart in Georgia. Small world… Our soldiers put there neck on the line everyday for us to have what we have. Thank you Mark and every other soldier out there. Mark, call me next year and we can do it again… Rockie Martin Pintail Farms

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 23 January 2008 )