View from my bucket. The ice was too thick to make much of a hole.
This is my first field report using iPhone technology. It’s interesting to file from the edge of a corn field over looking a spread of decoys, but something about it feels awkward.
The morning was cold, in the low 20s, and the pools at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area had 1/2 inch of ice.
Trying to break through it was exhausting, so I set up in a strip of standing corn 20 yards from a small opening I was able to break. A dozen decoys might be over capacity for this little spot.
A few small groups and several singles have been working the area shots have been heard from a few if the 9 hunting parties here today.
Word from hunters north, near Quincy, Ill., is that birds are migrating in good numbers. We’ll just need to wait for then to reach the confluence area of the big rivers.