Tangier Gunning Trip.

This Christmas, My Son Grant got his first shotgun. Since then, Grant has been doing a lot of practicing shooting clay targets, and since he has shown that he is pretty good at hitting moving targets it was time to make the step to wildlife. On Monday, Grant & I loaded up the Three Sons and ran across the Chesapeake Bay to Tangier Island to visit with my good friends Jeff Crockett and Donald "Thornie" Thorne to do some duck hunting. I had been talking to Jeff since Christmas to make sure that the time was right for us to come across to make sure we got some good shooting. With a big winter storm bearing down on us, Jeff gave me the go ahead to make the trip on Monday because the weather would be sure to get the birds moving. We had a good ride across with the wind and waves behind us.

We arrived in Tangier Harbor at lunch time on Monday.

After getting tied up at Parks Marina I caught up with Thornie and Jeff. Since we got there early in the day, we were able to get out in the duck blind that afternoon for a couple hours.

We got set up, and within a couple minutes Grant had his first duck.

That afternoon turned out very well. We got shots on many ducks, and Grant wound up getting 4 out of the five birds that we bagged during that short hunt.  Once shooting hours were over, we went back to the boat and hooked up our heaters since Grant & I were going to spend the night aboard. Later that evening, Jeff came down to the Marina, picked Grant & I up and took us to his home where his wife Nancy had prepared a terrific dinner for us. This was an extremely generous gesture, and one that Grant and I are HUGELY grateful for. Thank you Jeff & Nancy for treating us like family. We will never forget it and hope to be able to return the favor some time soon. The next morning, Thornie picked Grant and I up early, and we headed out to the blind again. As the sun started coming up, the birds started moving in. While we let Grant do most of the shooting on Monday, today was every man for himself.  Jeff and Thornie were right, the birds knew that bad weather was moving in and they were trying to get to shelter where they could ride the storm out.  Luckily, we were where they wanted to be waiting for them.  

We quickly dropped a good number of Red Heads and Brant.

This morning was absolutely beautiful, but I could tell that there was a big storm on the way,

and we had fourteen miles of water to cross to make it home. Once the first flight was over, we returned back to the boat and started across the bay to Reedville. We had a good ride back, and only had to deal with 3-4 foot seas, which is much better than the 5-7 foot seas that are forecast for later today.
Thank you Jeff and Thornie for making Grant's first duck hunt great! You have accomplished your goal of getting him hooked for life. He talked about how much fun he had hunting all the way home, and is already talking about coming back and hunting next year.
 We are very lucky to have such a great place as Tangier Island close to us.  Because of the great habitat that they have, the marshes and flats around Tangier Island hold a great number of ducks, geese and shore birds, but because of erosion, there is less and less of this habitat every year.  I can only hope that "the powers that be" can find a solution to this problem, so that all of my boys can continue to experience what Grant and I did over these past two days.