MattL

Another neat pic from this morning. A blind man could've followed this blood trail in the snow. He only made it about 40 yards.

I don't even use bungees. It might be tough to decipher from this picture but you can wrap the tree stand straps up and over the sticks and behind the stand in a figure 8 pattern. It holds everything together tightly and quietly.

Filled my tag this morning! He's not very big but as I get older it seems putting meat in the freezer is becoming more important than adding to my trophy collection.

Not much to report down in the southern part of the state. Need some cooler weather to push some new birds down. I knocked down a pair of wood ducks this morning. Fair number of divers buzzing around, but I was hunting skinny water with a puddler spread.

Had a good shoot yesterday. I didn't do any scouting late last week because I was set on bow hunting. Saw a ton of birds while in the stand so I scouted Saturday afternoon and found a good hunt for Sunday. The drake widgeon is in my freezer and likely going on the wall. I didn't take any closeup pics of it, when I got home my phone was wet and not working.

I actually cheated and used a pre-mixed brat seasoning packet with about 60% goose meat and 40% pork roast. Ground it twice through the coarse plate and mixed in the wild rice and chopped jalapenos prior to stuffing.

I've been in loaded up Jon boats with only a few inches of freeboard. Not something I'm going to do now that I'm older and wiser. I also remember a time about 15 years ago getting out of school early due to a November snowstorm and driving my truck way too fast for the conditions to get out hunting. Didn't end up in the ditch, but i remember the snow was coming down so hard you couldn't see much. I always had a shotgun behind the seat of my truck parked in the school parking lot. Never seemed like a big deal at the time...but then again it stayed behind the seat and I kept my mouth shut about it. And I know I've been in a boat with a makeshift plug. It think we used a wadded up T-shirt.

Yep! Probably should've mentioned that. I just used my regular brat mix that I use on venison brats, but added the cooked wild rice and jalapeños for a little extra flavor.

I had a bunch of ducks/geese from the past weekends so I decided to do up a couple different batches out of my "comfort zone". Last night I stuffed a 5 lb batch of fresh goose brats and grilled up a couple tonight. I think I hit a home run on this one! Easily one of my favorite brats, although like I said I never got too crazy in the past. I used 1 cup of wild rice (which turns into about 4 after cooking) and 3 jalapeños (partially de-seeded and de-veined) for a 5 pound batch of roughly 60:40 goose to pork. I probably could have scaled the rice back a bit, but it's not overwhelming. Previously I've only done jerky with waterfowl, but I know I'll be doing alot more sausage now as well.

I had a good solo shoot and a crazy mixed bag for southern MN this time of year. 2 honkers, 2 woodies, pintail, ringneck, and what I'm 99% sure is a hen or immature drake ruddy...never shot one before and I don't really hunt divers.

Pretty tough going this morning but we managed to scratch out a few birds.

Overall decent weekend for us. A couple guys started scouting Thursday and found a couple real good opportunities for Saturday morning. We decided to roll the dice and hunt a field on Saturday AM that was drawing in geese Friday AM. That didn't pan out for us and we only got 2 birds to decoy. Back to scouting on Saturday afternoon and we lined up a slough for the morning holding a mixed bag of ducks. We ended up with a 4 man limit of woodies, mallards, gadwall, and teal in about an hour. Should have been quicker than that but 2 of us didn't get set up exactly how we planned due to water depth and then didn't shoot well. The other 2 guys were set up further from us and finished their limits in 10 minutes.

I'm ready to go. I picked up an aluminum canoe off hsolist since the water is a bit higher than normal in the slough this year. Gave it a quick paint job and she's ready to go. Before: After:

Good luck! Hopefully your nephew can knock down some birds so the pup can see some action.

I've shot a couple different brands of fixed and mechanicals and they've all killed deer. The last 4 or 5 deer were with original muzzy 3 blades because they are one of the least expensive and most reliable heads. I don't have any complaints with any of the other heads but it gets spendy flinging $15+ heads into yotes.