I hunted with Mark Billings, his daughter, Emily, and David Breedlove. They drove down from Harrison last night to hunt with me and help move all my equipment back to Harrison on Sunday.

It was brutally cold here this morning. Only Wayne and I hunted our place today. My group went to hole 12 and it was fairly clear of ice. There were some patches of slush in the hole today. We put the decoys and robos out early.

About 6:55 a.m., three Mallards dropped in on us. Mark killed a Mallard hen and she fell right in front of the blind. At about 7:30 a.m., a single Gadwall drake circled once and fell right into the middle of our hole. I think that I shot him, although there were other shots fired.

About 8:30 a.m. three Mallards started working our hole. As oftentimes happens, a group of Gadwalls jumped in there with them. In fact, the Gadwalls, about seven or eight of them were just hovering in front of David on the south end of the hole. He was waiting on Emily to shoot and all of a sudden the Gadwalls decided not to land. David, Mark, and I all shot at them and only one Gadwall drake fell. Who knows who killed him? We wound up with two Gadwalls and one Mallard for the day.

We saw several ducks from then until noon, but none really wanted to work the hole. It was too cold for our one burner propane stove to work today so we used my propane heater to heat Sue Billing's famous potato soup. What a treat!

It is forecast to be even colder tomorrow, but we are planning on hunting.

More later,