January 2023 Duck Hunt

Drew Blake, President, and Michael Fussell, Fundraising Director, hosted a Marine veteran (Daniel Smith) for his first duck hunt on January 12-15, 2023.  The trip began under less then ideal conditions with Michael suffering a catastrophic boat trailer failure less than halfway through his trip down.  Drew and Daniel started the trip with a roughly 3 mile kayak paddle up an eastern North Carolina river.  They finally got to their hunt location around 8:30am and set up the spread.  Shortly after setting up a huge flock of resident geese made swing though no shots were fired.  After a long paddle back to the dock with sporadic scouting along the way Daniel and Drew enjoyed a dinner at a local restaurant before enjoying a night by the campfire at the Air B and B that they rented for the weekend. After calling everywhere possible, Michael decided to load up his brothers kayak and attempt to make the best of the situation.

Day 2 of the trip consisted of Daniel and Drew doing some unsuccessful scouting and resting prior to the arrival of Michael with fresh intel. After an uneventful afternoon hunt of watching birds land on the other side of the bay Drew and Michael decided to shift things up. That night all three spent a considerable amount of time camouflaging their kayaks in anticipation of the next days hunt.

Day 3 and Michael’s intel paid off big time.  Due to the lack of a boat they decided to sleep in and let the sun come up before venturing out into the unknown on kayaks.  After a one mile paddle across a bay they setup with birds diving into a cove and neighboring hunters screaming as they just filled their limit.  Michael and Drew hustled to get the decoys out, a mixture of bluebills, redheads, pintails, puddle ducks and geese were flung out into the water while Daniel waited in anticipation.  10 minutes later the sound of gun fire rang out and Daniel had his first duck, a stud drake bluebill.  And just as quickly as it began it had ended with Drew and Michael getting in on the action and a three man limit was filled in under 30 minutes.  The afternoon was filled with laughter and drinks in celebration of the feat that had just been accomplished.  To quote the locals “you boys went where in those and did what.”  Yeah we did and we came back with a strap full of ducks while the locals were left scratching their heads.