Forgot to mention... This early AM we stopped on the hill overlooking the lake we were going to hunt and looked it over carefully with binoculars. We wanted to know where the birds were and to see if anyone else was hunting the lake. Because it is a big stop-over spot for the really big swans we like to know how many are there and where they are.

My son immediately said there was a huge black bear in the inlet stream... Turned out it had a very big hump and a brown hide... Just a brown bear. Then her two-year-old cub came out and they fished briefly in the salmon-filled stream.

Not an ordinary way to start a duck hunt by most standards I suppose and one more good reason to stop and look things over.
art