The Styx

Quick report unfortunately no pics as my camera died a few days before the trip.

After 9 days off to usher in the duck season I was only back at work a few days. And a busy few days it was.

Then a shooting buddy rings me Thurs night and says you keen for a two nighter away shooting the Styx (wetlands area at the headwaters of the Taieri River).

It would mean taking the Monday off which I knew I would regret coming back knackered and straight into some early , early starts (4.30am) because of jobs on at work.

But I had heard a lot about this duck and Canada mecca so just had to cry off work.

So Sat afternoon we loaded his truck up and the tinny with as much gear as we could, and headed off. Arrived late afternoon to have a bit of a recce and glass the wetlands, plus double check access with some farmers.

We headed out for an evening shoot into some paddocks where we had seen some ducks flying over from one wet patch to another. Then the wind died and the night became clear. We managed a few mallards, but didnt fire the first shot until it was already getting pretty dark making for challenging shooting.

Next morning in the dark we put the boat in the water and slowly made our way to the preselected spot up river. Essentially way out in the middle of the wetlands where a huge number of geese and mallards had been resting up the previous day. Everything looked good, dark skies, wind. Got to the spot great and moved the gear from the boat across a chanel to our spot. Lay out blinds out, 12 full body mallard, 12 floaters and about 16 canada's.

It then occurred to us both that his whole area had been well chewed and had far less cover than we expected. To make matters worse we had not brought grass with us for the blinds. They were bare to say the least with what we had available on site.

Plus the wind turned very strong and slightly shifted round.
IMPORTANT lesson make sure you can grass the blind up well, it can make all the difference. A lot of the birds spooked presumably due to the blinds, plus they seemed to want to curve away and land nearer to where the boat was moored.

Rightly or wrongly we decided to stick it out where we were. We got some , but for my buddy a low to previous years and hard work.

For me it was amazing though, a small bag was of no consequence. We had all weathers in half a day, blue sky and sun with no wind, low heavy cloud with high winds and 2 .5 hrs of pouring rain producing puddles in the inside of the blind. But to look around at the vastness of the area surrounding me and the stunning beauty, was breath taking. A true experience.

We packed up and headed back finishing the night off at our farmer hosts pond which he insisted he reguarly had 40 odd ducks on. It was the calmest clearest night you have ever seen and the ducks a few paddocks away could not be persuaded to move. We saw zero fly and never fired a shot.

The following morning we had a hard slog to a large mai mai on a big patch of water, which the day before we had seen a lot of birds on and a big mob of Canada's feeding on the other side of the water.

Again the weather was not kind to us i.e. too nice. But we scored 4 Canada's, 3 mallards and a spoonie. For me it was a buzz as I bagged 2 of the Canada's my very first and what regal birds they are. When they replied to my mate and slowly flew in, what a sight.

Then it was back to the sleepout , grab a bite to eat and clean up the place. The total bag was only 35 mixed. We had our misses, we had our bad shots, we also both had a lot of memorable fine shots. I pulled off my first double twice in a row.

We arrived home and the clean up started before I hit the hay to get up this morning at 4.30am, and head off to Clutha.

It is hard to sum up the place and experience without pics. My buddy had often raved about the place, I never could understand why it was so special until now.
I guess its one of those places not easily forgotten and always holding a new adventure.

One things for sure, I will be back to chase those fantastic green heads and honkers