Well you know I've been through it, when I set my watch back to it, livin' on Teal time.

I got out in the Kayak this morning for my first Teal hunt of the season. Long drive, long portage, long paddle, but it was worth it. Blaze was happy.





This is a hero picture I took as a reminiscence to put in my dogs hunting diary. But what I wanted to show here is the decoys. Something I have wanted to try. I took some old worn out Flambeaus that I started hunting with in the late 70s, and painted the shoulders with a large Teal Blue patch. Not natural for resting birds, but I wanted to try it for the visual effect. Teal are gullable anyway. Not in the picture, I also had another separate spread of an equal amount of small Teal decoys, so it was somewhat of an experiment.



At two minutes before legal I had a small flock of Shovelers land. Well duh, the wing patches made the decoys look like drake Shovelers. Blaze could not see over the brush and when I looked over at her, she was upright bouncing on her hind legs like a circus poodle trying to see. She kept it up for probably 20 seconds. My laughing of course ran off the Shovelers.



Result following when it started raining flocks of Teal. I would give a wild guess that 75% of the birds were drawn to my painted Flambeaus over the Teal decoys. I paddled out in my Kayak to take a look and those suckers with the blue patches really stand out from a distance.

Bonus Dove are always nice.



Kayak rigging. Texas rigged teal decoys and camo lawn chair are under the back deck. Dry box in front of that. Blaze sitting on a boat cushion next. My seat with the gell pad for comfort, gun at ready, life vest in reach, bag of big decoys. Under front deck, drinks, spare single blade paddle, dove decoys, mojo dove, mojo stake.