Thanks for the education boy's.

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

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.

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

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

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

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...obertStack.jpg