End of Season Duck Hunt
 

Frank Cronin and I got out for the last few days of water fowling. We where glad we did as the weather was great for this time of year in NH. I didn't take many pictures as we where usually busy adjusting decoys and the boat as we have 6-7' foot tides. When not messing with the spread we got a good amount of mostly pass shooting in as these birds have been educated over the season. We did get geese to set in a few times which is a great site. Frank hunted with his 5 frame 10 D grade Hammer Saturday and his beautiful LC ten on Sunday, I hunted with a 3 1/2" 32" Beretta Silver Pigeon SXS both days. Just have this one picture from Saturday.

looks like you boys had a good day...nothing like being out there at the end of the season....im usall sad that the season is closing out but sometimes im glad too from being wore out from hunting..ha charlie

Congrats on a nice mixed bag to close it out!

Charlie is right. Sometimes that last hunt is met with sore legs, cold feet, and a worn out alarm clock. Nice birds and good picture of the gun and birds.

Two honkers, a bufflehead, drake mallard, and a black duck? I know black ducks look like hen mallards, so mine was just a guess on that last one.

A bufflehead?? Nope. It's a diver but larger than a buffie. Buffie's fly low, these fly high. We hear lots of them in the late season, see them fairly frequent but seldom in gun range. It's a nice looking drake Goldeneye. A trophy bird in these parts,nice shooting.

It looks like a golden eye based on what I can see in the picture. Looks like a great day indeed. Curious, what ammo did you shoot in that fine looking D grade?

I got this from Pete Lester who is compiling load data for the short 10. The load I used was a Federal hull; Fed 209 primer, 33.3 grains of Longshot; SP10 wad; 16 gauge 1/8" cork wad and a 1/8" felt wad in the shot cup to raise the shot column for a nice crimp; 1 3/8" oz of Nice Shot; star crimped. 1330 velocity - 8780 psi.

At the end of the hunt going back to the boat ramp was the NH Fish and Game warden. What was going to be a routine license and stamp check turned out to be a long discussion on Parkers, LC Smiths, and Damascus barrels. I had my LC that day and Bob had his Parker lifter in the truck to show and he was just so impressed with the size and weight of the LC and the craftmanship of the under lifter to the Parker. This warden was so inquisitive about SxS that I wouldn't be surprised he went to KTP to check out the double gun rack. He was a really nice guy.

I can only remember one NRO that wasn't... and no, he and I never met.

That load recipe is in my Short Ten reloading spreadsheet. It came from here:

http://randywakeman.com/Nice_Shot_Re...a_10_Gauge.htm

Thanks for posting this. My "short" 10s and I thank you and Pete!:)

Curious, what size nice shot did you load with?