The Swan Hunt

The alarm went off at 4:50 a.m. Thursday morning and I rolled out of bed. After heating up some water for my thermos I started packing the truck with all the things I would need for the hunt. At 5:30 I pulled out of the driveway and made my way to Ben's house. We packed his truck with all the gear and by 5:50 we were on Interstate 90 and on our way!

Ben has an elk permit, so we planned on being at his district to scout for elk by legal shooting time, but about 30 minutes into the drive he realized he had forgot his swan tag! Well, we decided it wasn't worth leaving it behind so we hightailed it back to Missoula and picked up the tag. I would have forgotten mine, but I packed it into my hunting bag so I wouldn't forget it - I knew I would early in the morning!

Well, we made it back to the elk district about an hour later than we wanted to and couldn't find any elk moving or bedded down. We spent about half an hour looking around before we were back on the highway and headed for Freezeout Lake. We arrived around 10:30 to Choteau, Montana and did a quick scouting trip around Freezeout Lake and Priest Lake to see what kind of birds were there. To our disappointment we found that everything was frozen over and there were not very many birds to be found. Ben knew a spot along the Teton River that he thought we might be able to find some ducks and an occasional swan so we decided we would try jump shooting it. Jump shooting is known in the waterfowl world as a method of sneaking up on ducks (putting the sneak on) and then surprising the ducks - when they take to flight you shoot.

Choteau reminded me of an area of Canada that Laura and I visited this summer with Andy and Amber. The mountains rise up from the plains quite suddenly and made for a gorgeous backdrop for our hunt. The picture isn't of Choteau, it is actually of Cardston, Alberta which has the same look as Choteau. The town has around 2,000 people and is one of those nice, slow moving communities that I love to be around. This is one of the communities that David Letterman has been spotted at when he takes his vacations to Montana. I can see why he likes the area!

The Teton River reminded me of The Wood River in Nebraska. It was only about twenty feet wide and about two to tree feet deep. It is a winding river with large ox bows and slow moving water which is great for ducks!

We saw a lot of ducks, a few flocks of geese, and about fifty swans, all setting in the river throughout the day. We walked along the river to the highway, which I measured in Google Earth to be four miles straight distance. I would wager with all the walking and sneaking around in the river bottom we walked between 5-6 miles before we made it to the highway. From the highway we thumbed a ride back to Choteau with a nice guy who is a big game outfitter in the area.

So what has result of the hunt? Well, things started out bad when we couldn't get a good sneak on some ducks and swans and we couldn't get into the river from the upper ridge without all the ducks seeing us. We eventually made it into the river and on our first jump I shot twice and dropped two ducks! Ben dropped one and we had a good start to the day with three ducks on the first jump! On our last jump of the day we jumped nearly 250 mallards. They were so thick that when we jumped them they had to leave in two groups. Once the first group got into the air then the second group was able to leave, but it was too late for them! Somehow I managed to miss all three shots, but Ben dropped two out of the group and when the dog brought the first one back it was a double banded duck with a $100 reward, but said "Void 08/06" so we will see what happens.

Well, after we got the ducks rounded up, we went and found a log to sit on and rest for awhile. We were about a half mile from the highway when we sat down and rested about three minutes before we heard wings overhead. It was a mallard circling and he landed in the river, around the bend from where we had shot just a few minutes before. Well, Ben had himself six ducks and I had three - in the Pacific Flyway we are allowed 7 ducks a day, and they can all be mallards. So we put the sneak on the duck and as we were peeking over the edge I spotted a swan looking back at me!!!!!! I ducked down and motioned to Ben to sit low, I whispered "THERE'S SWANS!" about as excited as I could without being too loud. He looked at me wide-eyed "Are you serious? How many?!" I had only seen the one swan, and I knew one of us could get it. We unloaded the #4 shot out of our guns and put in BBB. We popped over the bank and there were 7-8 swans sitting in the water. They looked at us and started to take flight, but we both shot and put two swans in the water. We each took one shot and had our swan tags filled! I shot a really young swan that didn't have much color to it, but Ben shot an little older swan - still a young one - and it had a black bill with yellow eye drop and black feet. My swan has a rosy looking bill and feet.

After we hitched a ride back to the truck, we had about a hour of shooting left, so we decided to walk in again and see what we could do. We only had one shot, and Ben got his 7th duck to fill his limit. I ended the day with three ducks, but I was satisfied with the hunt none-the-less.

Here's the only picture I took of the entire trip.
We had planned on staying Thursday night in Choteau and then doing some more hunting today, but we decided to head home and save some money on lodging. We filled our swan tags and that's what we went to do, we can shoot ducks around Missoula if we want to. I got home around 9:30 Thursday night, after driving 450 miles, walking close to 8 miles, and going all day without water or food, well except for my bowl of cereal I had at 5:00 a.m.. Needless to say, we were both tired but excited that we both managed to fill our swan tags on the first day!

Here's a picture of the ducks and swan - you can compare the sizes and get an idea of how big they are.
That's the short story of the swan hunt - although it appears to be rather long winded... I hope everyone has a great weekend, I think Laura and I are due up to find a few geocaches! Until again

-=Nolan=-