Don't know about anyone else but my excitement level is building with our national opening of the 'duck' season on Saturday May 1st this coming weekend.

We're back to our usual haunt on a big irrigation pond in mid-Canterbury. This year another son joins his two brothers and I and will bring his GSP retriever, a promising pup last year who retrieved a few evening birds shooting locally near end of season.

Hoping for some rougher weather this time to entice a few more mallards in to the decoys but we usually score pretty well on a mixed bag of duck, geese and swan.

Got the new boy a Girsan MC312 inertia operated semi auto so will be interested to see how this performs. He shot a few birds last year, more difficult evening pass shooting, with my Akkar semi auto and Miroku O/U and did quite well for a newbie at shotgunning.

Looking forward to hot barrels and plenty of birds down.