We are 4 1/2 days into our 6 day duck hunt with Argentina Outfitters. It has been nothing short of spectacular. We have been down annually since 2005.

The bird numbers are insane. We have taken Rosybills, widgeon, white cheeked pintail , yellow bill pintail , teal including speckled silver ringed and cinnamon , red shovelers, white faced whistling ducks, and fulvous tree ducks. The shooting has been phenomenal.

I will post a full report with pictures upon my return.

903 ducks for me in 6 days.

Good going Larry, can't wait to see/hear the details. Did you take your own shotguns or rent?

Safe return

Paul

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
903 ducks for me in 6 days.

That's burning some powder!! Any idea of your hit percentage?

75%.

That's some FINE shooting!

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
903 ducks for me in 6 days.

Wow....sounds like the eternal honey hole in the afterlife. Pictures please Larry!

Norton:

PM me your e mail address. I can send you your the pictures faster than I can post them here.


CJF:

Thank you sir. It isn't as good as it sounds. Some days the way the ducks were decoying made them almost impossible to miss. Also killing 2, 3 or 4 with a single shot also helps the average.

Norton is going to post some pictures for me. I have new computers installed while I was gone. There are issues which will be dealt with on Monday. Thanks Norton!

The following summarizes our hunt:

Outfitter: Argentina Outfitters

Area: Near Mones Cazon

Estancia: Santa Rita

We have been duck hunting with AO annually since 2005. My youngest son, Michael & I did our 2013 hunt with AO immediately after our dove hunt at Los Chanares. We were originally scheduled to hunt near Ameghino. However, they changed the area at the last minute citing issues with the house near Ameghino. Having been there many times, I knew the story was true. I had never been to this area before.

The area is very different than the other areas we have hunted with AO. The terrain was not as flat. The soil was more sandy. The lagoons were MUCH larger. I did not know what this would mean as a practical matter.

We arrived via charter plane. It was quite comical. They announced that we were going straight to the field. Now imagine us standing in the middle of a pasture digging our stuff out of our bags changing cloths.

AO limits you by providing a certain number of shells for the morning shoot and the evening shoot. You are allowed to kill as many as you can with these shells. Also, we have AO get us some different shells this year. They had slightly more pellets than their normal loads. We shot #5 lead shot throughout.

I have to say that the weather report scared the hell out of me. It was far WARMER than it should have been and the first few days were very clear and at times windless. Not good! With one exception, I do not think this impacted us much to my surprise. We did have one afternoon where we struggled. I ONLY shot 34. However, I was taking risky shots I would not have normally taken. They birds were not decoying and were very high.

We took a wide variety of ducks including:

Rosy bills (very common)
white cheeked pintail (very common)
Yellow billed pintail (very common)
Speckled teal ( common)
Cinnamon teal ( shot a few, maybe 20)
Silver teal ( shot a few, maybe 20) very beautiful bird
Ringed teal (rare)
Red shoveler (shot maybe 50)
White faced whistling duck (shot less than 20)
Fulvous tree duck ( shot more than any other trip)
Chilean widgeon ( rare)

I know I am missing one.

We shot a hell of a lot of ducks. As noted earlier, I shot 902 ducks with a total number of 1225 shells. A few of these shots were wasted shooting wounded ducks and 1 nutria. I also had 1 single defective shell that would not fire. Michael killed between 600 and 700 as I recall. He slept in the last morning.

My personal highlight was, as always, hunting with my son. It was unfortunate that my other son, Ryan, could not go. His mom had a brain aneurism about 3 months ago. He stayed to help her.

One morning, we got some cloud cover and wind. The ducks wanted into our decoys in the worst kind of way. We hammered them hard. I killed 104. I think Michael got 86. I wish I had a video of this shoot. It would have been incredible.

Let me describe the overall shooting another way. Prior to this, the most I had ever killed in a single morning shoot was 92 in all of our hunts with AO since 2005. This year, my lowest morning shoot was 91!

The people who owned Santa Rita was very nice people. We enjoyed meeting them. Jorge Trucco from AO is a very nice guy. We enjoyed him as well.

Gentlemen. this is a hell of a duck hunt. We are definitely going back.

Larry,

On your recommendation, I have spoken to AO about booking for them and I am pleased to say we are organising our first hunt for 2014.

They seem to have some awesome locations and I can't wait o go back to Argentina and get involved in the ducks and boar.

Did you shoot anything else?

Kiri

Kiri:

We didn't shoot anything else there. However at Los Chanares,I shot a rather large boar.

It looks like you guys had a "blast"! Congrats on the great hunt and now I can hardly wait for september 1st to get after some birds here. What is that large dark bird your son is holding? Could you pm me some more details on this hunt Larry? I'm looking at putting a hunt like this together for my group of friends and am still narrowing down where to go.

Peter:

That bird is a chaja (spelling?). They are excellent eating.

I will pm you some info tonight.

Great pics Larry. Thanks for sharing them.

The big bird your son is holding is called a SOUTHERN SCREAMER.

Latin Name: Chauna torquata

They are an ancient branch of waterfowl, not part of Ducks, Geese, Swans.

quote:

Originally posted by collector:
Great pics Larry. Thanks for sharing them.

The big bird your son is holding is called a SOUTHERN SCREAMER.

Latin Name: Chauna torquata

They are an ancient branch of waterfowl, not part of Ducks, Geese, Swans.

Thank you sir.

I knew the English name. We have always thought they were saying the name in Spanish as CHA-HA. Are you saying it is CHA-NA? I saw the same name you referenced when I was showing a picture to someone.

Great safari Larry ,yes we call it CHAJA if you remember ,they scream chaja,chaja chaja, they are not totally legal to take them beautifull photos and you are almost a gaucho by now...

Hi Larry,

The local (Spanish) name is CHAJA as juanpozzi mentioned. Although when I hear it in my head it sounds to me as "Cha-Kha" or "Cha-haa". "J" is used in mysterious ways by Spanish speaking nations.

Chauna torquata is just the scientific name.

Larry ,when hunting water buffalo sometimes i shot them near the neck with my 375 hyh and the gauchos prepare empanadas with it and ostrichs ,i liked the meat ,ut i prefer the crestones ducks made milanesas did you tasted them in that manner .

Juan:

They made them into some type of appetizer. It was very good.

Larry ,ill take you sometime to hunt geese ,red wing partrige and montaraz or bush partrige and bercasina or snipe ,but we need special permits .Now from september to december we have permits to hunt ricefields millions of ducks and not limits .

Juan:

I will do that one of these days.

Larry another expedition you must do is picazo duck among palmtrees in Formosa .