Kevin J Legg

The divers were able to get it out yesterday.

A former student of mine and four friends of his put a John Deere gator through the ice on LOTI today. Fortunately they are all ok. The warm temperatures and high winds have obviously done a number on the ice so be very careful!

Pete, Nice to see your kids are taking to the water.

Although we had a slow morning on a local Indian River Lake I did manage to catch a couple small Tiger Muskies (20+24") Circle hooks made it easy to release them.

Not a great year but we still had some memorable times. Anyway, it's about the time spent together in the blind more than the numbers!

We've all made mistakes in our water fowling and the important thing is we learn valuable lessons. We saw you had limited gear and were new to the game so decided to not hassle you. We had a couple more days to hunt and had killed a few birds already. I'm just glad to know you realize what you did was wrong and unsafe and you learn from it. Glad you got a bird and good luck in your pursuit of big lake hunting. Hopefully you'll still be at it long after I'm forced to hang up my decoys.

Thanks for the great photos.

I made a run to the western end of the lake for the last of the duck season. There were quite a few hunters out in the unseasonably warm weather and not an over abundance of ducks. We managed to get six birds on Friday and five on Saturday. We had a couple young guys move in much to close to us (125 yards away in our line of fire) on Friday that basically put an end to our hunt. They were in a small boat with an electric motor and should not have even been on the lake. Hopefully they will practice better hunting ethics in the future.

Finally got out after the waterfowl and was pleasantly surprised by the number of mallards and geese in the upper river although the number of divers seems quite low. Manage to get 4 mallards and a goose yesterday morning but the birds are very wary and difficult to fool.

After limiting out this morning I took some photos of birds landing and walking in the decoys. Many geese around and flocks worked pretty well. They were still landing in the field when we left.

My dad passed away nearly 29 years ago on opening day after having a heart attack while hunting. They found him laying next to the 4 pointer he had taken. Thanks for sharing your story. It brought back many happy days in the field with my dad and it is a great tribute to all dads that were and are great mentors to their sons and others!

Nice looking birds.

Blockhead, Check out the Columbus Day Youth Hunt Poll on the Big Game/ Small Game forum and you'll see that my prediction on conflicting opinions on youth hunts was correct. Perhaps I'm not so ignorant after all. My wife participated in a women's pheasant hunt in St Lawrence County on Saturday. 50 birds we released on State Land for that hunt. Guess I need to adjust to new way of doing things and hunt the thicker stuffer after the youth and women hunts to pick up all the missed birds.

Our early duck season has ended . Now on to muzzle load riffle deer hunting for a couple weeks till goose and duck opens again.

Hunted with my old friend Alan Hunter, his son Mike and grandson Brendan. Brendan got his first duck and grandpa couldn't be outdone. I can remember taking Mike for his first duck hunt many years ago!. Slow morning but well worth getting up to see a beautiful sunrise on the marsh and Slash got two retrieves..

Great stuff. Love to see a young generation getting involved.

Actually we washed, dried, and rested him and took him again this morning. He did another stellar job. At it again on Monday and Tuesday.

We had a great opener. Five shooters with a limit of woodies, 4 mallards, and a teal. Slash did a great jog of retrieving, even though he's not a lab!.

First off congratulations on a successful hunt! I'm certainly not against introducing youths to hunting as I taught school for 33 years and am a former Hunter Safety Instructor. However, the state land I tried to hunt on Monday was nearly devoid of birds due to the youth hunt. Others I talked to said they experienced the same on other state land. First year we've ever hunted with zero flushes and with many hunters afield we only heard a handful of shots. I'm afraid with the special privileges allowed to the youth hunts that there may be a backlash from some senior hunters if it disrupts their long traditions. I know there are concerns over the youth deer hunt coinciding with the bow season. Not sure what the solution is.

We fish right up till ice up and it seems the latter the better and they catch them well through the ice. It's a great place for big fish

We had another great shoot on the next to last day of the early season. The dogs worked great.

Nice river fish.

If you want a trophy( 10+ lbs.) Quinte is hard to beat right before ice up but the whole Eastern end of Lake Ontario is also a great place to fish eyes. I'm personally getting into the hunting mode but will likely make a few more runs for salmon and walleyes throughout the fall. Oh, and I should give muskies a try as I've never really given them a serious effort because hunting always seems to get in the way. So many choices and so little time!

Thanks for the report.

We had a great hunt this morning. After harvesting our limit and driving the trucks and trailer to the decoy for a photo op. a flock decided to lite in the decoys. We loaded a gun and handed it to the camera man (who stopped to see how we had made out) and he got in on the action.