Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Things are Heating Up

The weather is heating up.  Nearly 60 degrees at 8:00 am.  Almost 100 degrees difference from one week ago when the thermometer read -28 degrees.  The water had deiced enough over the past couple of days to allow the ducks to make it back to the cattle ponds just as the season reopened yesterday.   


It took some work but I did manage to find a slip on a pond that I had never flown before.  It was filled with hungry Mallards and a few other mixed bag.  Between the heat and the bird's weight being lower than I would have liked, pitch suffered but he still had some altitude over the pond.  I flushed and instantly knew what duck was going to get it.

One drake left the flock to blaze his own path and was instantly signaled out by my human eye, which means the falcon saw it long before.  Tulsa crashed into the duck and held on as the power bind sent them tumbling head heals. They both hit the ground hard and there was no fight in the duck.  



It didnt take long for the curious cows to make their way over to see what was going on.  So I got the quintessential Oklahoma duck hawking hero shot.


-RVZ

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