I've Been Thieved!

P

Paul Mc

Active member
I was shooting the ice yesterday in my meadow box with my buddy Andrew. We had a beautiful hole in the ice about 10x20' oval. Three full body decoys and three floaters. Against the ice it mine as well been a neon light with an arrow saying "Eat Here, YUM!" A pair of black duck came in textbook and I fired right and dropped my bird, Andrew fired left and dropped his. As he got up to retrieve his bird, out of nowhere in comes Mr. Snowy Owl, grabs his bird and gone. To put it into scale, the pic shows the Owl standing on a mature black drake......
View attachment Snowy:Black.png
 
Rick L said:
your friend misses out on duck dinner

but what a story to tell
Click to expand...

I agree with Rick, never a good thing to lose a bird but it didn't go to waste and an awesome story to tell
 
Good morning, Mc~

Fabulous! One you'll never forget, I'm sure. (Of course it reminds me of the first time you and I gunned together - and we had a grey-phase Gyrfalcon fly the rig.....) And, from what I've seen and heard, Great South Bay is an Arctic wasteland now - that Snowy must feel right at home.

BTW: I'm guessing your thief is Missus Snowy. All that dark feather flecking points toward female and/or younger bird. And, since female owls are generally larger than males, it'd be easier for her to abscond with Andrew's bird.

All the best,

SJS

 
NEAT! Probably had rice grains in its breast, anyway, so the snowy saved your bud's life[crazy]
Years ago, we would have to be very judicious about retrieving ducks, especially during the peak of osprey season.
Worst thieves were the black-backs, who would prey upon downed scoters.
Spectacular photo and a great memory!
 
That is what I first noticed, Steve, very dark plumage for this time of year...

We had some go-'rounds with a pair of eagles that wanted our dead and crippled divers when we were at Munuscong this year. Normally, we approach crippled birds at a steady rate of speed or they will dive prior being netted. Steve Lewis had not interest in letting his redheads become eagle lunch!

I made the mistake of allowing a pintail to float-in that I dropped well out from the rig a couple of openers back on the Bays de Noc three years back. As I was watching him float back to me into wading water (no dog,of course) through the binoculars. I heard the eagle before I saw him swoop down and grab the duck. There were two active pairs along that stretch of bay. I have seen as many as five in there during the Fall.
 
I've learned it doesn't take an animal or raptor long to learn gunshot means food. Bear, wolf, eagle...pretty easy pickings for them...except the yote..always legal to harvest here in Michigan.
 
It was very impressive. I guess the food source has been good because she is camped out here now. I scoped her stalking black duck yesterday, very cool. What's really neat is when she will just drop off the Osprey nest deck, no flap glide sideways and down to another station and just plop.....no flap....
Here's another sighting of another bird....
View attachment SnowFlight.png
 
Very cool. When I lived in SD we would see snowy owls sitting on power lines hunting the roadside ditches when the weather got really cold. Many years ago I was doing a sneak on some wood ducks on a small beaver pond in Georgia. Just as I flushed the birds, a sharp-shinned hawk dropped out of a tree and smacked one of the wood ducks and they both fell to the ground. The wood duck was easily twice as big as the hawk. The little sharpie was sitting on the ground and just looked stunned at the size of the bird he had just hit, and the wood duck quickly got up and flew off. The hawk flew back up in to the sweet gum he had been sitting in. I suppose he had been watching the woodies and when they flew up towards him, he just couldn't help himself.
 
I guess if you are going to have a duck stolen, that is about as cool a culprit as it gets!
 
View attachment 5B235E62-47DC-44C9-A027-0BFFE9000270.jpeg

Very nice and unique. Two weeks ago I was hunting a new spot and upon shooting a bluebill I had an eagle rush over and race my dog for it. Upon the shooting the second bluebill another eagle joined the second eagle in the competition for my birds. The two eagles perched in a cottonwood directly behind my decoy spread. With every shot they would swoop in and try to pick up my birds.
 
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All God's creatures gotta eat, and most times they need it more than we do.

The first time I gunned Chincoteague. I learned you get to your birds before the gulls, and to find birds that dropped far off, just follow the gulls and get what's left.

Ethically ya gotta count those birds, win or loose.
 
Lost a pintail to an otter or seal, on two occasions. Hunting lower Columbia tidal marsh. Scratched my head the first time it happened, as I was sure I had killed both birds, but after picking up the first duck I turned to where the second should have been, maybe 15 yards away, and it was gone. After that happened a second time I quit hunting that spot.
 
Years ago I lost a Canada goose to a sea lion or seal in the lower Columbia estuary. Rare enough that a very experienced biologist friend wanted me to write it up for a journal note.
 
Paul - We get the same thing but with eagles. One time layout hunting, we lost 2 goldeneyes to eagles in one day. Later that day, we did recover a crippled canvasback drake we lost. An eagle was circling over, heading over to the area he was circling, we found our lost can. They can be helpful at times. :)
 
Just this am had an eagle dive bomb a bull honker! I didnt notice its approach because from a distance I wrote it off as a Turkey Vulture. But as it passed my lizard brain realized this is much bigger than a TuVu and as it plunged at the honker, I saw that it was a juvie eagle. I guess something in ITS lizard brain triggered a warning because when it was no more than a foot away from grabbing the bull by the neck, it suddenly disengaged, rose, did a quick circle over the spread and reassessed across the field from a high perch. The eagle left after 10 minutes or so (and kicked up the real vultures a few hundred yds away). I was left wondering, what the heck I would have done if he snatched the head off my deke!
Made my morning!
 
Years ago I worked a retriever at a shooting preserve. It had driven shoots and had thousands of pheasants on the grounds. One year we had a snowy owl on the property and we would find pheasants with only their heads removed. Owl would kill a bird and only eat the head.
 
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