It took me a while, but I finally finished it!

[Mort Hill]

Very awesome achievement! Congrats!

 

[Wheels]

Congratulations! That's a really neat achievement.

Guess I have never thought of how many different North American ducks I have shot before. You made me try to start counting, and took me down memory lane.

 

[Tra3]

Do you have a favorite? (Either favorite species or favorite hunting method for the species)

do you also have a favorite duck to eat?

this is quite impressive to get all of them!

 

[jduckhunter]

Do you have a favorite? (Either favorite species or favorite hunting method for the species)

do you also have a favorite duck to eat?

this is quite impressive to get all of them!

Red Heads were always my favorite duck to hunt. There's just something about that dark, rust colored head and that regal looking body that always got me fired up. Hunting them from a blind over decoys in the wide-open shallow water off the coast of Texas is just something you have to try. As far as eating ducks I never really cared for them, but my kids ate a bunch of them growing up. Now I have friends and relatives that eat them and make jerky with them.

 

[IdaRam]

Hell of an accomplishment! Well done.

 

[Rubberhead]

I swerved into working on the waterfowl slam because I realized that my growth as a duck hunter had taken a wrong turn somewhere and I needed to fix things.

It hit me when I rushed out to pick up a gadwall I had killed and the first thing I did was flip it over and look for a band. Now, I know that very, very few gadwall get banded. I'm involved enough in waterfowl biology and management that I know there were no graduate studies being done on gadwall and that a gadwall only got banded if it stumbled into a trap or rocket net set for other species but that's what that gadwall's life meant to me. It's value to me and been reduced to whether it had a band or not yet I could easily think back to the days when I would stare at field guide to waterfowl and dream of seeing then killing my first gadwall. I remember killing my first gadwall. He was a prize as important to me as my first African animal. Over the years, I had gotten good at killing gadwall and had killed a lot of them but I had become numb to their importance. The realization hit me that I need to fix something in my own life. I had grown out of "Limit hunting" for waterfowl. I no longer needed to post pictures of limits to feel good about myself as a waterfowler. I turned myself inside-out.

It took a year or two of new growth to come up with the idea of working on the slam but it made sense. The best way to recapture that feeling of killing a new species was to focus on taking that new species.
I didn't like the idea of hiring a pilot and a guide reducing my role into nothing more than pulling to trigger so I added the qualifiers that I would work on the slam by hunting solo and only in my home state of South Carolina. I started rescuing old decoys. I repaired them, added heads from Homer or Autumn Wings, and painted them to match the species on my new target list. I bought a leather journal and wrote down all the species in list form on the first couple of pages then dedicated two pages per species to record details of each bird. When I started in the fall of 2012 I had already take 19 species of duck in South Carolina. Now, 11 years later, I've only added 6 additional species but it's, for me, not about the destination but the journey. And what a journey it's been...

#20 - Black Scoter

#21 - Surf Scoter

#22 - White-winged Scoter

#23 - Common Eider

#24 - Common Goldeneye

#25 - Oldsquaw

I've spent a lot of hours this season sitting over a black-bellied whistling duck decoy I made using a Herter's body and a small canada goose head and a pair of common merganser decoys I put together from Restle decoys and Homer heads. It looks like 2022-23 will end without me adding another species to the list but I'm already looking forward to 2023-24.

 

[Hunt anything]

Fantastic. I have a handful left to complete the 41. I did the cinnamon just before Christmas. I'm not registering the slam but just doing it for myself. I also am lacking the tree ducks and have not found a good source yet. Even Ramsey Russell didn't have a good source for me.

South Florida seems the most reliable spot for both of the whistling ducks, that being said I’ve shot blackbellied int south Texas, Louisiana and coastal Alabama. I’ve seen them in Mississippi but never got a shot. The only fulvous I had a crack at was when I was guiding in south Louisiana a client hit one and I finished it off but gave it to the client. Later talked to the client and the bird ruined in his freezer!

 

[Hunt anything]

Great job, going to have to get off my butt and resume my quest for my final 3, thanks for the motivation!!

 

[LivingTheDream]

Man I can't imagine all the places chasing ducks would take you. Congratulations on such an accomplishment!!

 

[-- Jr --]

Awesome! Congratulations

Best wishes

 

[Milo]

My story is pretty similar - started in the 80s with no thought of shooting the slam since it wasn't even a thing then. After I moved to Alaska, I suddenly found myself pretty close to being there. I have 4 left and will hopefully be down to 2 by mid-February.

Knocked off king at the beginning of this year.

 

[Hunt anything]

Wha

My story is pretty similar - started in the 80s with no thought of shooting the slam since it wasn't even a thing then. After I moved to Alaska, I suddenly found myself pretty close to being there. I have 4 left and will hopefully be down to 2 by mid-February.

Knocked off king at the beginning of this year.View attachment 514469

what a gorgeous bird. What else are you looking for?

 

[Milo]

Wha

what a gorgeous bird. What else are you looking for?

Hoping to knock off cinnamon teal and black bellied whistling duck in Mexico in 2 weeks. After that, just white front goose and ross goose. There are some birds that I don't even have photos from when I was a kid, or others where the bird is just in a meat pile. It is what it is.

After that, I may poke away at some of the subspecies and birds not included on the list of 41. I already have the emperor goose, but could go for trumpeter swan, aleutian goose, dusky goose, aluetian teal, and eurasion wigeon. Lots of options, even invasives like egyptian goose or mute swan. Where does it end?

 

[Green Chile]

Which part of Alaska? I lived there for quite awhile but you have to make real serious efforts to get to the Barrow Sea. It's WAY the heck out there.

 

[jduckhunter]

Man I can't imagine all the places chasing ducks would take you. Congratulations on such an accomplishment!!

It was a real trip literally. It took me up and down the east coast, up to New England, over to California, up and over to Alaska (several times) and down to Texas a few times. It was worth all the time and effort though because I got to see some amazing things and enjoy some unreal moments that you just couldn't see or experience anywhere else but in a duck blind or laying in freezing mud or standing in ice cold water or sitting in a boat so numb that you can hardly get your shotgun loaded. Yes, it was an unreal trip!

 

[Milo]

Which part of Alaska? I lived there for quite awhile but you have to make real serious efforts to get to the Barrow Sea. It's WAY the heck out there.

I got a spot

 

[Milo]

It was a real trip literally. It took me up and down the east coast, up to New England, over to California, up and over to Alaska (several times) and down to Texas a few times. It was worth all the time and effort though because I got to see some amazing things and enjoy some unreal moments that you just couldn't see or experience anywhere else but in a duck blind or laying in freezing mud or standing in ice cold water or sitting in a boat so numb that you can hardly get your shotgun loaded. Yes, it was an unreal trip!

Congratulations. It is definitely a journey.

 

[USN]

Nice

 

[Mtn_Infantry]

Congratulations that’s an awesome accomplishment. I’m with @Green Chile you need to go for a Turkey Slam. A single season slam is doable or you can attack it with different gauges, archery, shotgun, black powder. You can add Gould’s and Ocellated, 49 States, US/Canada/Mexico …. Lots of variations there.

 

[Green Chile]

Actually a single season turkey double slam isn't that hard. You can get 2 birds in some places and that's what I did a few years ago. 4 trips to the right places with enough birds and you can have a double slam.