What a happy Friday, indeed, friends! Perusing the calendar earlier this week, I realized that today marks the one-year “birthday” of the bright side of the road! My mind is torn – I can’t decide if I feel like it has been much longer than one year, or just a few short months. But, with 87 posts, nearly 15,000 {just looked again we – are at nearly 17,000!!!} views, and a whole bunch of happy, happy news in between, I guess a year really makes sense! Didn’t we just reach 10,000? Gahh I feel like that was just last week, and that was the end of September! Well, let me just throw in another big THANK YOU to all of you readers! This has really been such a fun experience for me, and I look forward to delivering more stories and more recipes in the upcoming months. {Duck season is oh-so-close…!!!!}
Even though duck season doesn’t officially get started until November around here, I figured this would be as good a time as any to give you your essentials list for those fun-filled months. October 1 has brought with it the most glorious reprieve from South Carolina summer heat, and I know the next few months will be fantastic. What about early teal season, you ask? I had plenty of questions, as you know. To answer yours, no, I did not participate in teal hunting that weekend. Why? A casual afternoon 4-wheeler ride (more on that later… eeeeek!) down to the duck ponds to scout where we were going to hunt the next morning left me with one image. Well, 3, really. Alligators. Three of them. Right. Where. We’d. Hunt. I am talking like right where we would be standing in the water, trying to hide amongst the phragmite. I will admit it, I am that big of a wuss when it comes to large-ish alligators. A little small one? I have no problem holding him in my hands like a new pet. BUT WHERE IS HIS MOMMA? Exactly.
Now gear yourself up before November, friends, and enjoy!
As promised! Enjoy!
Well, it’s officially the end of duck season! And what a fantastic one it was. (You can see the photos/ read all of the previous posts about this season’s hunts here!) Even though the final hunt was a slow one, we still had a fun filled weekend near Georgetown, SC spending time outdoors with good friends and enjoying good food. I made my duck bbq and it was a hit once again!
As for the ducks, we ended up with a few blue bills, some teal, ring necks, shovelers, wood ducks, and a ruddy duck. Unfortunately, no one was able to limit out, but we spent some great time together out in the pond. I was able to snap a few photos in the blind, and got some great shots of the post-hunt festivities. Stay tuned for a compilation of some of the videos I was able to shoot over the past month or so while hunting- a nice little video diary from the 2012-2013 duck season!
Enjoy!
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| Such a beautiful morning |
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| Prine wanted to make himself more camouflage… |
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| Enjoying a post-hunt cold beverage! |
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| Hunters |
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| Setting up for a tannerite explosion. |
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| Marmaduke thinks he is Snoopy, apparently. |
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| Bald Eagle |
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| Tired pups on the ride home |
The video is on its way!
Degrees, that is. Twenty-four chilly chilly chilly degrees Wednesday morning for our hunt. Brr! Quite a bit different than the t-shirt 65* weather from last week, and unfortunately, my shooting suffered along with my fingers and toes! I will be there first to admit, there are some hunts where I just can’t seem to get it together. I fancy myself at least a decent shot, rarely emptying my shell belt unless crippled ducks need to be shot on the water to keep from losing them. Wednesday? Woooo brother. I had quite a time getting my limit (which I finally did, around 9:30). The other 2 hunters in the blind with me seemed to have the same problem, so I am chalking it up to that 24* weather we were dealing with :). Each of us ended up with our limits, though- totaling 16 ring necks and 2 mallards.
Prine, on the other hand, was a champ. For an 8.5 month old puppy, he is already showing such promise, and he did not let the cold get to him. Always eager and excited, all it took was a little direction in the water and he would swim right to the duck, bringing it all the way back to the blind before dropping it. I can’t wait to see how far he will have come by next season!
We are all gearing up for the last weekend of duck season, so stay posted for more updates after the weekend, and a little surprise I have been working on for the past month or two. Can’t wait!
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| Such a good boy 🙂 |
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post, we had another great hunt yesterday morning. While our harvest wasn’t as varied as it usually is (we ended up with mostly ring necks and a few mallards), we got to see some pretty incredible sights. We were covered up early on, unfortunately before legal hour, but it remained fairly steady throughout the morning with ring necks buzzing us like nobody’s business. Remember when I talked about the sound ring necks make? Get’s your adrenaline going before you even see the ducks! Anyways… Around 8:30, we could see 3 ducks working into the pond that didn’t look (or sound) like ring necks. Once they got about 80 yards out, I noticed the unmistakable shape and color of a bull redhead’s noggin. Two drakes and one hen. Oh man, how badly we wanted those ducks. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of trying to work them into our decoys, they got close enough to another blind for the hunters in it to shoot at them, and we were out of luck. Both drakes were knocked down, but then hen got away. Oh how I wish that could have been us! But congrats to the other hunters… I guess…
That wasn’t the last bit of excitement we had, however. Way off in the distance to our right, we noticed a huge flock of ridiculously large white birds. As first, we brushed it off as a flock of cranes, or maybe something else we regularly see around the Lowcountry. Dare I hope it is a flock of snow geese we can take a shot at…? But oh no. Once they got a little closer, we could tell our theories were quite wrong. The giant wing spans and huge black feel made the birds’ ID quite obvious- swans! That’s when we heard another hunter yell, “It’s swans!! Don’t shoot!” Don’t you worry, kind sir. I would prefer not to endure $1000s in fines, potential jail time, and loss of my hunting license. It was still really cool to see such a large group flying over, listening to them honk for several minutes since they were flying so slowly. I was even able to take some video of them flying. (Pardon the quality of the video, and some of the photos- they are just still shots from my video camera.) Enjoy!
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| Part of our harvest- 4 hunters limited out |
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| Dixie made some great retrieves |
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| Swans! |
When in doubt, move on out! That was my motto for our hunt last week. After the first spot we went to proved to be a futile effort (a pond called the “secret hole”… apparently so secret, the ducks didn’t even know it was there), we decided to make a move around 8 am. We hadn’t pulled the trigger the whole time leading up to then, so we figured, what the heck! Our next stop proved to be a little more successful, scratching out a handful of ducks over the next hour or so. Then, it shut off again! What to do? Move on out, I say. Move on out. By the time we came out of our third blind, we were only 3 birds shy of a 3 person limit. Even though it can be frustrating having to move around so much, it is nice to change up the scenery, and it gives you a little more variety in terms of the types of shots you are able to take. All in all, another successful hunt!
We had another awesome hunt this morning, so stay tuned for more on that tomorrow! (Just as a teaser, I was able to get a video of 10-12 swans flying over us.. eek!)
At last! A duck recipe for my dear readers. As I am sure you can tell by all of my duck hunting posts, I have quite a few birds in my freezer and a handful of delicious recipes I have been dying to share. I have made several dishes this winter, but am naturally a bit scatterbrained so of course I forgot to take pictures or write down my directions. I promise I will be better about that in 2013!
Ducks can be a bit finicky to cook- if you don’t do it just right, you can wind up with a tough, rubbery, tasteless bird, and no one wants to eat that! While I do love a good seared duck breast, the crock pot is a great way to slow cook the meat until it is tender, without a lot of hands-on time in the kitchen. Between the bbq’d duck and the tangy horseradish sauce, this recipe was a real success. My guinea pig tasters all cleaned their plates, and I know you will too!
INGREDIENTS:
Duck BBQ:
4 duck breasts, fileted off the bone (yield 8 filets)
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tsp butter
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 bottle of your favorite bbq sauce (I used a smokey-sweet version from Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup of red wine
1/3 cup of water
Horseradish Sauce:
1-2 tbsp prepared horseradish (you can always add more if you like a little more kick)
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayonaise
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Sourdough bread loaf, sliced
STEPS:
1. Start by getting your duck breasts off the bone. This is pretty easy to do, but even easier if you have bought them at the grocery store. Just kidding. I was using mallards and teal, but whatever you have will work since they will be cooked for a lllllong time. Real long. Like 10 hours. I also only ended up with 7 filets from the 4 birds, as my dad I made a direct hit on one and the second side was too shot up to use.
2. In the bottom of your crock pot, put a layer of the chopped onions down, along with the butter. Then layer the ducks on top of the onions, and sprinkle the garlic on top of the ducks. I had one red onion and one sweet onion on hand, so I used the red onion for the base layer.
3. Now is the time to douse those ducks with the liquids. Pour in the bbq sauce, red wine, Worcestershire, and water, making sure all of the duck is covered. Then give it a quick little stir.
4. Set the crock pot to low, put that lid on, and walk away! I got everything in the pot around 8:30 in the morning, and didn’t touch it again until 4:30 that afternoon. What a delightful sight to come home to. Am I right? Pardon the sauce up the sides… I had a little spillage when I was clumsily transporting everything. Oops…
5. Almost sandwich-making time! To make the horseradish sauce, just combine all of the ingredients with a fork until they are blended. You may need to mess around with the quantities to get the taste to your liking, but it should ultimately look like this:
I also grilled up that sweet onion I mentioned before, just to have a little something extra on top of the meat in the sandwiches. Cook them low and slow until they are super soft. I even added another dash of Worcestershire. Why? Because it was there, and I like it.
6. I used a sourdough loaf for the sandwich bread. It is nice and crusty on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside- perfect for absorbing all the juices in the bbq! Once you have sliced your bread, drizzle it with a little bit of olive oil, and stick it under the broiler until it is toasted. Then slather it with the horseradish sauce- as much or as little as you like!
7. Now, at long last, pile that bread high with the duck bbq. I am telling you, don’t skimp! You will want to have a ton of it on there. Then add a few more onions for some extra flavor, top it with the second piece of bread, and take the biggest bite you can! Oh man, what a treat.
How good does that look?! I am telling you, you won’t soon forget how much you love this recipe. I know I will be making it again before too long! Let me know how you like it. Enjoy!
Happy Sunday, all! This weekend was such a fun one in terms of hunting. Saturday morning was chilly and beautiful, and, despite a slow start, turned out to be a great hunt for everyone. There were definitely a lot of firsts. There were 3 others with us who had never been hunting, and it was a great experience for them. We all bundled up and headed out, separating between two ponds. Like I mentioned, the morning started off pretty slow in our pond, but the other blind ended up knocking down 4 teal by about 8:30. Not too shabby for 3 newbies! I know it was such a good feeling for each of them to come away with some birds. On the other hand, we only had 1 blue bill by then, and I had yet to pull the trigger. I guess that’s why they call it hunting! My trigger finger was getting antsy, so I wasn’t quite ready to call it a morning. Luckily, several big flights of ducks came over around 8:45, and we had our opportunity to get in some good shooting. Prine, pictured here, is only about 7 months old, so we have been trying to get him as much hunting experience as possible to keep up his training. Yesterday morning was no exception, and he really impressed us. I knocked down a duck that landed about 65 yards away, and, with a little direction, Prine made a great retrieve. And, what do you know? It was my first red head! Even though it was a hen, I was super excited.
After the hunt, we walked over to another pond that is never shot, but instead used as a reserve for the ducks. It is such a beautiful setting, and is a great sanctuary for them. And let me tell you- there is no shortage of ducks over there, as you can see below! I could stand there all day and watch them, listening to the different sounds of the different ducks. From whistling widgeon to quacking mallards, its an amazing sight and a treat for the ears, whether you hunt or not!
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| Such a pretty sunrise |
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| Hidden in the phragmite |
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| Prine pup |
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| Hen red head |
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| Old duck blind |
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| Look at them all |
