Hollywood Ducks......

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Hunted with Dad and Mr. Russell at his farm this morning and afternoon. Other shooters passed in and out through the day but we three mostly stuck it out the whole time.

Spent yesterday afternoon getting the big pond ready. It was frozen solid, we broke it out and chopped up all the ice we could get to. Put in the ice eater and let it run all night so we'd have open water this morning.

Shooting time was 6:25am and at 6:15am we had 100 ducks in the decoys. By the time the legal hour sounded they were gone and we didn't bust a camp for nearly an hour. We hunted till 10am then took a break, in the bag was three mallard drakes, three redheads (including my first of the season), and a single Hollywood.

We did breakfast at the cook shack then Dad and I headed home for naps. Back to the big pond to meet Mr. Russell at 2pm. Things warmed up a bit soon as we got there, the Hollywood ducks began to fly. They aren't my favorite duck to shoot but considering the conditions we were taking what came in.

We stuck it out till legal dark and made a fair bag. Two mallard drakes, a grey duck, a big drake redhead, and several Hollywoods which finished up all our limits.

I had one of those "on" days where I was killing them high, wide, and deep. I killed several that brought exclamation from other shooters that they couldn't believe I'd knocked it down. We're going again tomorrow, I'm sure I won't be able to hit a thing, that's usually how it goes.

Was shooting the Swamp Angel with 1 1/4 ounce loads of Kent TM. Dad had his Model 21 out in the morning but moved to his new fangled automatic in the afternoon because it's so much lighter.

[Jeff Kuss]

Ok, Destry . Tell a guy that only jump shoots ducks what an ice eater is.
Jeff

[Russ Lindsay]

Jeff, an Ice Eater is basically a large propeller in a housing that you set below the water. It is run by electricity provided usually from a generator (although some duck hunting sites have electricity, the ones I am familiar with do not so we use a generator.) The Propeller keeps the water moving so that it will not freeze up even during very cold temperatures. Further the open water is very attractive to passing waterfowl who will attempt to land among your decoys in this open water. If they attempt to land, Destry will shoot the eyes out of everything near and far. That's his story and I'm sticking to it ;>) BC

If you use your search engine looking for ice eater you will find lots of providers and youtubes showing their uses.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Ice eaters are a mighty handy tool, I'm glad my friend has one. If he didn't, we wouldn't have had any shooting this weekend at all.

We hunted again this morning and the duck numbers improved, though again, there was an awful lot of Hollywood in the bag.

It was pretty well limits all around, even a canvasback fell to the boys on the island which was fun to see. I wound up the morning with another pair of redheads, a mallard drake, and three of the aforementioned, along with a big fat coon.

The coon was a hoot, the boys in the island blind spotted him coming out of a small piece of cover behind the point blind we were shooting and pointed him out to me. I was shooting with Mr. Russell (the owner) who announced that he didn't need any coons near his duck ponds as they might fight with the dogs. I jumped out of the blind and pulled the old "I don't see you, I'm just walking by" shuffle while actually angling towards him and managed to get within a long shot. I only had #6 shells left by this time and just annoyed him with the first couple rounds. I was reloading and trotting his direction when he actually turned and ran towards me which caused his quick demise. At 20 yards, a load of 1 1/4 of #6 shot is mighty hard on a coon's head.

All in all a terrific weekend with my Dad and some great friends. We even had a couple young bucks with us today who picked up all the decoys while we watched from the bank and gave directions. Getting older does have it's slight advantages in the field, I used to be those guys not too many years ago. *wink*


DLH

[Destry L. Hoffard]

P.S. to Blue: As predicted, my shooting today wasn't half what it was yesterday. I got my ducks, but I missed a few in the process, and only managed to pull out one high one.

[Harry Collins]

Any "jewelry" on the ducks or coon?

[Russ Lindsay]

Destry said "I got my ducks, but I missed a few in the process, and only managed to pull out one high one."

That's good enough to keep your marsh cred with me.

[Dave Suponski]

Excuse my ignorance but what is a "Hollywood" duck?

[Russ Lindsay]

I believe the "Hollywood" or "Hollywood Mallard" refers to a Northern Shoveler. Some suggest that everything in Hollywood is not real and that the Shoveler is certainly not a mallard? Although somewhat similar in markings one is a prized animal to harvest the other, not so much. BC

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Harry: No jewelry on them ducks or the coon either one oddly enough. I've always wanted to kill a band on a Hollywood but no luck so far.

Blue: I like your analogy on the Hollywoods better than mine. We always just said them ducks was like them people from Hollywood, they're always smilin'.

[Dave Suponski]

Thanks for the education boy's.

[Angel Cruz]

Does that mean the Hollywood duck don't make good eating??

[Russ Lindsay]

Angel, I think they eat just fine. They just have the bad reputation which, like most old wives tales, does not have much real data to back it up.

I have prepared them many times and done blind taste tests and no one I know has ever been able to reliably identify the Shoveler vs the Mallard.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Yeah I agree, they aren't really any different than other ducks. If you get the skin and the fat off, it's just meat. It's got to be a hardcore fish eater for that not to cure the taste problem.

I think it's that big weird bill that turns most folks off, they just don't look good. We did get a couple nice drakes which is a rarity in Southern Illinois. Usually you shoot them pretty early in the season and they're just brown. The cold weather has got their color coming on pretty good, lots of white and green on the older drakes now. I've always meant to save one to get mounted, I just never get around to it.


DLH

[Destry L. Hoffard]

P.S. We had a funny occurrence yesterday evening that bears repeating. We'd had a couple Hollywood's come in pretty close, Dad and I had knocked them down. We'd had a small group light wide of us a few minutes before and they were clear down at the other end of the pond. I'm talking about so far away that our shooting at their brethren didn't even disturb them. One of the pair we'd knocked down was crippled so Dad threw his gun up to settle him down. When he fired I happened to be looking down at the ducks on the far end. One of them was directly in line with Dad's cripple shot and at the report started flopping like it was hit. Sure enough, after a bit of leg kicking, it was floating dead as a wedge. Dad didn't see what had happened as his attention was focused elsewhere, I pointed it out to him and he was as amazed as I was. I'd say the duck was 90 yards or more away! I ran the boat down there to pick it up and it had one pellet right through the head. Talk about a Golden BB!


DLH

[Dave Noreen]

With your title of Hollywood Ducks I was thinking of something like this --

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v316/Ansleyone/ClarGableandRobertStack.jpg