outdoors

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, itching to see a robin, or the first flock of geese in migratory formation.  Whatever the reason, I thought it a good time to pass along these photos taken by Mark Stryker of Alexander.  With the exception of the Scrub Jay pictured above, these photos were taken last summer near his Alexander home.

House Finch, Goldfinch in left bottom corner

Female Red-bellied Woodpecker

Hummingbird Moth......on a butterfly bush no less!

Orb Weaver

White-crowned Sparrow

?????? Anyone...anyone?

American Goldfinch

I'd like to thank Mark for sharing these awesome photos with the Batavian

After entering Mike Hilchey’s town of Elba home, the first thing that caught my eye was the number of fishing rods lining the wall. Turning to hand him my jacket, I saw the glass covered display cases full of vintage spoons and spinners. And that’s just inside the entranceway.   

As Mike leads Claudia and me through a narrow hall, we see a few paintings on the wall, mostly waterfowl, including one signature Roy Mason watercolor. Entering the den was like stepping back in time five, six, seven decades and more. Here was the treasure trove of vintage fishing lures: hand-carved wooden lures with glass eyes, bronze spinners, deer hair frogs & mice for the fly-fishermen, even a tiny Redeye Wiggler made for the fly-rod. And that barely scratches the surface of his collection.  

There are boxes bearing the names of Heddon, Creek-Chub, Eppinger, Arbogast and others, all synonymous with noted fish catchers of the mid-20th century.  Others are dated even further back in time, bearing the names of South Bend, Pleuger, Chapman, and the Paw-Paw Bait Co. There is also a collection of Buell spinners from the late 1800’s.

Mike was born and raised locally. The Hilchey homestead was on Trumbull Parkway, but his dad, the late Weldon Hilchey made his living in rural Genesee County. “Dad had a welding shop in Elba and he knew all the local farmers. Any that had farm ponds we had access to,” Mike stated. As a result, Mike began wetting a line with his dad early in his formative years, decades before Take a Kid Fishing became a slogan.   

Fishing was hot in those years for the father and son, and there were days when it seemed like the bass were just waiting for the lure to hit the water. “Some days we’d catch a fish on almost every cast.” he said. There were also yearly family trips to Canada, up beyond North Bay, Ontario. “Me, mom, dad and my sister all fished. We fished for everything, pike, bass and walleye.” 

Having listened to Mike Hilchey’s accounts of fishing trips to local farm ponds with his dad, of family outings to Canadian waters, its no wonder he’s taken to collecting vintage lures. Then I asked how long he’s been at it.

“Roughly I’ve been collecting for 28 to 30 years” he said. “I got started before many people got into it. At that time I could go to flea markets and garage sales and buy a whole tackle box full of lures for as little as $20 or $25.”       

Today many of Mike Hilchey’s mint condition lures are listed anywhere from $100 to $150 apiece. Some, like the Heddon Spin Diver, command an even higher price. “You can’t get one for under $500”, he said. Still, the Spin Diver’s price tag is not the costliest among his collection. When Claudia asked if he had come across any really unusual or unique stuff, he replied, “I’ve had my share of good finds – sold some, traded others” he said. One of his most valued is the Shakespeare Rhodes Minnow, pictured below. For vintage lure collectors, a mint condition “Rhodes” is considered a rarity and will command a price in the thousands!

His passion for collecting vintage fishing lures hasn’t put a damper on Mike’s angling enthusiasm. For the most part his days of farm pond angling are a thing of the past and he now spends much of his time on the bass tournament circuit. Now retired, Mike Hilchey puts his boat in the water sometime after ice-out, fishing every chance he gets until November 30, the day bass season closes. 

 Below are a few more photos from Mike's yesteryear collection

An unusual splatter-finish

A 1942 South Bend fishing catalog

There’s a good story behind many of the lures in my old tackle box. Such is the case with the wobbling spoon pictured above. Called a Red-eyed Wiggler, it was at one time manufactured by the Hofschneider Tackle Co. in Rochester, N.Y. I was twelve years old on the day I made a mental note to purchase one. And I doubt I ever clipped it to my line without thinking of two former Batavians who, back in the day, were virtually inseparable. You see, they were the reason I went out and bought a “wiggler”. Before I tell you about them, I first need to fast forward a few years.

I was an up and coming northern pike fisherman on the day I walked into Barrett’s Batavia Marine to see the late Paul Levins. I wanted Paul to show me how to make a slip-bobber rig for catching northerns. I was strolling between used gun rack and the counter when I heard Paul’s voice from the back of the store.  “That’s a nice pike,” he said.

It was a nice pike, big as any I’d seen up to that time. Having seen the fish, I walked right into the mix, immediately asking “Where’d ya catch it?” The proud angler was from the east end of town, I had seen him around, but didn’t know him personally. “Under the Jackson Street Bridge,” he replied.  It wasn’t long before I learned the pike in question wasn’t caught at said locale. As is common practice among anglers, I don’t blame him for trying to keep his hotspot a secret.

What’s more, at the time the fibber’s account made perfect sense to me. The reason being, it had only been a few years earlier that I was standing atop the old Lehigh Railroad Bridge – which was adjacent the South Jackson St. Bridge - when I saw a rowboat passing below. In it were the aforementioned pals who grew up on Batavia’s southside. Pat Pullinzi was doing the rowing while Mike Lovria tended to his fishing gear.

Pat Pullinzi

And as I stated previously, from their earliest years together, through St. Anthony’s School and all through their BHS years, Mike Lovria and Pat Pullinzi were inseparable. Whether they were fishing the Tonawanda, hunting upland game (pheasants were plentiful in those years) and chasing rabbits behind the late Mike Lovria Sr’s, beagle, the duo were practically joined at the hip.

It was a late spring afternoon when Lovria and Pullinzi passed below the bridge in a rowboat.  From my vantage point I could see a minnow bucket on the floor of the boat, probably full of chubs. In the bow were fishing rods, one of which had a Red-eyed Wiggler attached to the line. Word had it that, Earlier that day, one of the two – I’m not sure which – hooked and lost a big northern pike somewhere in the vicinity of Whiskey Run. When I saw the pair heading upstream they were returning in an attempt to relocate the big fish.  

Mike Lovria

In those years, being at such an impressionable age and desiring more than anything to catch a big pike,  the mental image of a young Mike Lovria and Pat Pullinzi rowing upstream in pursuit of a big northern was etched into my back pages. And it was only days afterward that a Red-eyed Wiggler occupied a compartment in my tackle box.  Forty-eight years later it's still there.  

That’s Tim Sawyer  rerigging his fishing gear. Minutes earlier, something inhaled the Spin ‘N Glo tied to the end of his line and raced downstream a ways before breaking water. When the  fish breached the surface, we saw that it was a big king salmon, tinted red with age, and boy, did it launch itself out of the water. It didn’t flop about, but rather had its body perfectly parallel to the river surface, high above the water and facing downstream. Kind of looked like a big muscle with fins - then it crashed back into the river and kept going. The fish had no doubt spawned in this same stream, spent the next 4-5 years at sea gorging itself on anchovies and the like. Its biological clock said it was time to return to the place of its origin and procreate. Chasing down Tim’s lure had put a temporary halt to those plans. The fish made one long run and the battle was at a standstill. The line was still taught, but there was no movement. The big fish had wrapped the line around submerged brush before continuing on its way.

It was a Thursday afternoon, only a few hours since we launched a two-man Zodiac, into a narrow stretch of the Little Susitna River. Originating in a place called Hatcher Pass in the Talkeetna Mountains, the Little Su flows southward for approximately eighty miles before emptying into Cook Inlet. The plan was to float a 47 mile stretch of the river between Parks Highway and the inlet.

We stowed the fishing gear and alternately paddled and drifted with the current several more miles downstream before finding a sandbar on a bend in the river, an ideal location to pitch the tent. We arose early the following morning, had a quick breakfast and were on our way. The scenery along the river was different, the bank lined with a wide variety of flora: evergreens and birch trees, wildflowers and plants I’ve not seen before or since. Occasionally we’d see an eagle gliding high, or sometimes precariously perched atop a Sitka spruce. Many times, while drifting quietly, rustling sounds could be heard in the thick brush of the river bank, but unable to see through the dense growth.

At one point during the afternoon we had stopped to fish – or snooze – when we saw an unusual sight. A member of the gull family called a Kittiwake plummeted into the river along the opposite bank. The Kittiwake is the only gull that occasionally dives and swims underwater to capture its food. It hit the water for what seemed like a split second, and came up flapping its wings. It was quickly airborne, clutching what looked like a large eel. In its haste to make off with its dinner, the Kittiwake flew into an overhanging branch, and dropped its prey back into the river.

In its lower reaches, the river widened, the sand and gravel bars, replaced by shallow, rocky stretches. It was in such a location where the raft sprang a leak. Fortunately, Tim had the foresight to bring along a patch kit. The repairs took only minutes and we were once again on our way. At 1 a.m. Saturday morning, 47 miles downstream from our take off point, we beached the raft. The next day we’d venture north to Montana Creek for another go at the King Salmon, bringing an end to my Alaska visit.   

The spring of 1997 had been quite damp in Batavia, gloomy even by Western New York standards. Still, I was surprised to get my first tan of the year inside the Arctic Circle. Not to be confused with the polar ice cap at its northern extreme, much of the Arctic Circle is full of lush growth, crystal-clear rivers, mountains and, during the month of June, 24 hours of sunlight. During our stay the sun was visible 24 hours. Each morning, between midnight and one a.m., the sun would skim the horizon before once again beginning its ascent. 

Not being used to catching shuteye in the daytime, the constant sunlight made sleeping difficult, even in the confines of a tent. There were times when I felt physically exhausted, but mentally the wheels were still turning. And the mosquitoes didn’t help. Lying inside the tent, you could hear their non-stop drone. They seemed to be just waiting for us to exit the tent. It seems the farther north you go, the bigger - and bolder - the mosquitoes.

Even the caribou find the mosquitoes annoying. The Alaskan Pipeline runs parallel with the Dalton Highway and Mike Bilbee, a game warden who patrols the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, said he’s seen caribou literally get beneath the pipeline and use it to scratch their backs.   

We arrived at our destination by traveling north on the Dalton Highway, a 414 mile long, two-lane gravel road beginning outside of Fairbanks and stretching to the Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. In between are three settlements: Coldfoot (pop. 13), Wiseman (pop.22) and Deadhorse (25 permanent residents). After reaching the 66^th parallel, the southern edge of the Arctic Circle, we stopped for pictures before pushing onward. We stopped outside of Coldfoot,  setting up camp on the south fork of the Koyokuk River.

The Koyokuk’s south fork is a rocky bottomed, swift-flowing river, noted for its arctic char. While we were a bit early for the char migration, we did manage to supplement our diet with Arctic Grayling. Considered one of the arctic’s most sought after game fish – lake trout & arctic char being the others – grayling are small in comparison. A grayling of one pound is average, anything 2-3 pounds is a good catch and four pounds is world class. Noted for their tall dorsal fin, the grayling of the Koyokuk River were accommodating and feisty on light spinning gear. We caught enough to sate our appetites. Stuffed with butter, wrapped in tin foil and cooked over an open fire, they proved quite tasty.

While the fishing was good, we had to stay on our toes at all times. Fresh bear prints were visible in the soft, bare earth along the river. At one point I tried to bathe in the river, but after wading ankle deep into the Koyokuk I changed my mind. I’ve bathed in the lakes and rivers of the far north, but nothing like this. The water was cold it numbed my ankles – I as afraid to submerge. I left the bar of soap on a rock, returned to camp, grabbed a washcloth, a five gallon pail and took a sponge bath.

It was on the return trip, about two in the morning, when Tim and I caught sight of wolf near the side of the road. Black as coal, the wolf looked our way, almost as if our approaching vehicle was of interest. Then just like that, it was gone.     

Next: Floating the Little Susitna River

Through the courtesy of Lester and John Lines, the owners & operators of the Aurora Mining Company, Tim Sawyer and I had set up our camp on Harrison Creek in the East Crazy Mountains of east-central Alaska.

This being grizzly country, we armed ourselves accordingly, carrying a high powered rifle and a .44 magnum wherever we went. A couple weeks before our arrival, seven grizzlies had been spotted ambling down the grassy slope of Mastodon Dome (so called for the prehistoric remains once unearthed on the site). All seven bears eventually made their way to the Lines’ camp, passing through without incident. An avid hunter, Tim had seen the big bears up close, the previous year taking a grizzly measuring nearly nine feet.  

Also in camp was “Pete” the German shepherd. A few years earlier a friend of John Lines noticed a puppy that had its snout wrapped with duct tape to keep it from barking. John's friend removed the duct tape and threatened to tell the authorities before leaving with the dog. The dog was then placed with John and the two became best friends.

 Prospecting was a lot of work. Tim donned a diver’s dry suit and vacuumed the bottom of the creek, sending rocks & sediment up a hose and onto a small floating dredge where it was deposited onto a small sluice. Gold, being the second heaviest element, sank to the bottom of the sluice before it could be washed out the back.   

While Tim worked the dredge, I used a pick and shovel along the creek bank, shoveling rocks, mud and sediment into five gallon pails until they were half full. Adding water, I swished it around some, before pouring the contents into a sluice set up in the creek. Sometimes, after the cloudy water passed through, flecks of “color” were visible on the bottom of the sluice. That was gold. We then washed off the sluice pad into another bucket, before transferring it into a pan. Using a little bit of water, you gently tilted the pan back and forth, allowing the water to wash away silt, exposing the gold. Generally, in a streamside operation, any gold left in the pan was so small you needed an eye dropper to pick it up. It was then transferred into a glass vial.

Though our work yielded minimal returns, it had been a good experience. Still, I was ready to try something else. There were grayling in Harrison Creek and after ten days of prospecting I was ready to go fishing.     

Ten days into our stay the weather turned and Tim thought it a good idea to take a field trip. We backtracked the fourteen miles through the East Crazy Mountains, only now there was a slight difference. Three days of rainy weather had reduced the graded secondary road to muddy ruts – three hours worth – until we reached the Steese Highway once again. Not so surprisingly, we weren’t on the highway long when we hit dry weather once again.

We traveled to the settlement of Circle, Alaska, on the banks of the Yukon River. There we came across one of the locals selling books out of a large tent. For $1.25 I purchased two books, one being Hemingway’s, The Old Man and the Sea, the other was Phillip Keller’s, A Shepherd Looks At Psalm 23.        

Our next stop was just down the road, at Circle Hot Springs, and a relaxing swim in water over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Outasight! Just what the doctor ordered.  The next morning we made one final stop before returning to base camp. We had breakfast in yet another tiny settlement, this one called Central. This was a real treat, as breakfast in camp each day had consisted of oatmeal and half an orange.

It was also in Central where I spotted a pay phone. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. That meant it was 7 am in Batavia and Claudia hadn’t left for work yet. The phone rang twice before she picked up. “Hello?” It was good to hear her voice. “Hi Honey. I miss you. Can we have cavatelle,  meatballs and sausage when I get home?”      

Next stop: the Arctic Circle.

The seven hour flight was nearly at an end, and only then did I bother to look out the window. Looking down I noticed the glare of the sun, reflected off the snow and ice-capped peaks of the Wrangell Mountains. It was 10:30 pm. I wouldn’t experience darkness again for a month.

The date was June 1, 1997, and the plane was minutes from touching down in Anchorage, Alaska. At the airport I would meet up with Attica native Tim Sawyer, then a phys-ed instructor and high school football coach in Palmer, Alaska. There were two days of classes remaining, after which Tim and I would spend the next month seeing a good deal of Alaska, gold prospecting, hiking, fishing, photography, etc. Our journey would cover more than 2500 miles of Alaskan wilderness with seven different camp sites. Our travels took us through the Alaskan Range, across the Yukon River and beyond, to the Arctic Circle and several stops in between.

The adventure began with a five hour drive north to Fairbanks, then traveling northeast on the Steese Highway, a two-lane gravel road, for one-hundred forty miles. At some point, Tim turned off the “highway,” following a graded secondary road for fourteen miles through the East Crazy Mountains. By traversing a series of rolling hills and valleys, we came to the north fork of Harrison Creek. There we would set up base camp for ten days before moving on to the Arctic Circle and another go at the gold and some mighty fine grayling fishing.  

Four weeks later we would cap off our adventure by rafting a forty-seven mile section of the Little Susitna River, a two day excursion in a two-man Zodiac, a rubber raft with wooden floor boards. Through a series of posts over the next few days, I would like to revisit Alaska, and share the experience.

Monday is the Winter Solstice, officially the first day of winter and  the shortest day of the year. With three months (at least) of snow, wind and ice in the offing, I'd like to take one last look at autumn, and some of the locales Claudia and I canoed, hiked and cruised along the back roads. 

West Bethany woodlot

A grove of maple and hickory trees

Rather than build up their winter food cache with tender shoots of osier and black willow, the occupants of this beaver lodge raided a farmer's corn lot.

October moon

Black willows along Tonawanda Creek

A stop over for waterfowl, a home to aquatic fur bearers.

A layover between flights.

A placid backwater.

Late autumn on the Tonawanda.

Winter offically arrives with a crescent moon.

Though I once fished the little stream in my early years, I never knew it had a name. Not long after we moved to Creek Road, a former neighbor, the late Anthony Torcello, told me it was called Celery Brook. It seems that back in the day, the White Swamp – where the stream originates- was once drained and used to grow celery.

Flowing out of the swamp, the little creek meanders through woods, fields and through another small woodlot before emptying into Tonawanda Creek. It seemed like a good place to capture the season’s first snowfall.

 Skim Ice

Cattails mirrored on a placid surface

Snow-capped Queen Anne's Lace

Autumn remnants

Time to head  home

It was 7:10 a.m. this morning when the high-pitched honking was audible several moments before they came into view. Finally, they appeared, coming out of the northeast, each group nothing more than a dark slit in the overcast gray. It was one of those vast throngs of Canada’s that spread across the sky. Along the southern edge of the flock were smaller fowl, their wingbeats much faster than that of the geese. They were ducks, and the scene reminded me of a squadron of fighters accompanying much larger bombers.

Despite the size of the flock, they were flying too low to be migrating. I’m guessing they came from the Sandwash, only a couple miles distant. The flock on the Cedar Street quarry has more than doubled in the past month.

They’ve been staging for weeks now. Huge flocks of geese, Canada’s making their stopover on local waterways and impoundments. In recent weeks they’ve been dropping into freshly cut corn fields in vast numbers. Great rafts of honkers sitting on Lake Ontario have been taking advantage of the spillage in the massive grain fields in Orleans County. There seems to be a great number of geese still on hand throughout the region, indicative of the weather. I hope the trend continues.   

The afternoon began with a lengthy canoe ride and troublesome wind gusts - and the wind was at our back. The return trip promised to be a real hoot.

We were in a wetland measuring nearly a square mile, a cattail jungle dotted with potholes – all of which held and incredible number of ducks. We took no guns along, no cumbersome bags of decoys and no retriever. With the opening day of ducks season two days away, we were scouting, searching for the ideal location - a thick stand of cattails to conceal the canoe from incoming waterfowl.  

On this day the tops of the cattails were bent over by the stiff wind and yet myriad waterfowl were having little difficulty negotiating the elements. Ducks were vacating the potholes in great numbers. By the time we left they had easily number into the thousands. While countless numbers took wing, many came zeroing in to our location. Once realizing their mistake, they applied the brakes, at the same time quickly scrambling to gain altitude. 

Having a prior commitment, I knew I wouldn’t be back on opening day. Not that it mattered. Two   hours spent amid the marshy environs had been reminiscent of a waterfowler’s bygone era. An that was fine by me.

It’s been an enjoyable autumn on many fronts and there is much to give thanks for. There were a handful of goose hunts, at least one memorable bowhunt, a few scenic canoe rides, and the chance to wet a line on two occasions. And I managed to take in at least one high school football game each weekend. But the scene that readily comes to mind is that of a gray October afternoon when an overcast sky turned the surface of the potholes black, the tops of the cattails bending in the wind and countless ducks on the wing. I felt like we had paddled back in time, right onto the cover of a 1950’s Outdoor Life magazine.  Happy Thanksgiving!

It's that time of year when retrievers tend to shine, really making their owners proud. After considerable time invested in training, many a Lab’s owner will now savor the moment as their charge leaps from the cattail blind or camouflaged duck boat in pursuit of downed waterfowl, or maybe work the swale for upland game. Yet many a Lab isn’t trained to perform in the woods, fields or swamps – they are simply family pets and good companions. Such is the life of “Hurricane,” one of three Labs owned by the Kehlenbeck family of Alabama. And while not your conventional Lab, Hurricane possesses many character traits for which Labrador retrievers are noted.  

Attentive and focused......

though not always!

Always happy when getting attention.

Stately in appearance.......

and noble-looking.

but most of all, they're good friends.

The above photo depicts Oak Orchard Creek little more than a quarter-mile upstream of Lake Ontario. From the creek mouth to Waterport dam, this is a much wider stretch of stream with a more diverse fishery than found upstream. But on this day, with the exception of few bumps at the end of the line, neither the trout nor salmon were willing to cooperate.

Having moved upstream in search of warm water species, Mike Draper works a rubber worm in hopes of enticing a bass or pike.

The creek bank along a stretch of stream known as "Fiddler's Elbow."

Drake mallards and a lone hen soaking up the sun.

Doug Harloff plying the waters of Marsh Creek, a feeder stream spilling into the Oak Orchard at Twin Bridges.

On the return trip empty boat slips signify the close of the boating season.

I never know what I might come across while driving the back roads.  Take this morning for instance, when I saw a standardbred race horse swimming in a horseshoe-shaped pond.

"Nitroglycerine" is being tended to by owner Frank Zambito and trainer/horse farm owner Fred Haslip.

I think he's smiling at me!

Swims over...back to the barn.

Left to right Nitroglycerine, Frank Zambito and Fred Haslip.

Joe Lawrence is on a roll. Last year he closed out the deer season with a monster whitetail scoring 144 on the Boone & Crockett scoring system and placing him high in the New York State Big Buck Club’s muzzleloader division. (The Batavian, Dec. 20, 2008 – Father & Son Memories). On Saturday, the opening day of archery season in New York’s southern zone, the elder Lawrence did it again. He began his fortieth bow season by taking another massive whitetail that is all but certain to make the NYS record book. The big buck sported ten points and weighed a whopping 202 lbs. field dressed.

It was late afternoon when the buck appeared, already displaying rutting tendencies by chasing after four does.  “I used a grunt to call to turn him, and he stopped and looked in my direction,” Joe said. “I hit the grunt call again and he came right to me.” He made the shot from a tree stand at a distance of fifteen yards. 

Snow geese mingling with Canadas

A closer look at the "snows"

Vultures take flight

Get ready...

Here they come

Calling 'em in

Fetch 'em up!

Turkey vultures are normally seen gliding high overhead, soaring on thermal currents, those columns of rising warm air that enable them to cover miles while conserving energy at the same time. Last Wednesday I took these photos along the edge of an evergreen forest. Seven were roosting in a dead hardwood with several more situated in a splintered pine.

While a few birds flew back and forth between the edge of the pines and the dead tree, for the most part they were unalarmed, staying put for several photos.    

Above photo depicts one turkey vulture spreading its wings while another preens its feathers. There is much speculation as to the reason for this practice. Some believe the wings are used as solar panels to generate body warmth while others tend to think they are utilizing the suns ultraviolet rays to kill bacteria picked up from diseased carcasses.

They are ominous-looking creatures, and with their featherless heads, turkey vultures may not be much in terms of appearance, yet they perform a valuable service by cleaning up carrion. Even from high overhead, the turkey vulture employs its keen sense of smell to locate food, one of the few birds of prey able to do so. 

Every so often I stole a glimpse heavenward. The early a.m. sky was crystal clear, the lightshow overhead spectacular. Orion, Pleiades, Cassiopeia and both Dippers stood out clearly while the spiral arm of the Milky Way appeared to be a misty vapor spanning the dark expanse. 

Doug in foreground, Jim in background, setting decoys.

The canoe is loaded to the max with decoys, packs, shotguns. Amid the gear sits Sadie, Doug Harloff’s chocolate Lab. I’m seated in the bow while Doug mans the stern. Some distance ahead of us a small beam of light pierces the darkness - a headlamp worn by Jim DiCasolo. Situated in his canoe are more decoys and Quaker Hill Dee Dee, Jim’s chocolate lab.

Doug looking for incoming geese.

A forty minute canoe ride – including one portage – took us to our destination, a brushy clump of growth that would serve as a blind. Before getting situated there was the business of setting out decoys. Already the first hint of light penetrated the horizon, bringing with it silhouettes of ducks zipping past at close range.     

Sadie doing what she does best.

With the last of the decoys set, both canoes were then pulled into the “floating island” and covered with camo-mesh. As daylight increased it became easy to identify ducks on the wing. Mallards, blue wing teal, black ducks, woodies and even pintails were on the move. But duck season was still a month away.

Jim DiCasolo scans the sky.

We were here for geese, and once the first flocks were heard, Doug and Jim went to work on the calls.  Both felt it would be a spell before they got any response, as the honkers were heading for the feeding grounds. We looked forward to their return trip.

Before long a pair of Canada’s came in, dropping into the decoy set. The shotguns barked and a second afterward, Sadie and Dee Dee leapt in, swimming to the fallen birds.

Dee Dee, 11 years old and still going strong.

It was obvious both dogs had been taught well. Whenever a flock of geese came into view, or even low flying ducks, the dogs locked in, following intently with their eyes. Dee Dee and Sadie were a joy to watch, and on this day, six hours spent standing in thigh deep water passed quickly.