Here is Nick with a beautiful pair of hooded mergansers that he and his dad are going to have mounted. It was a great hunt with a mixed bag of ducks and geese. 3 geese, 2 hooded mergansers, 4 broadbill, 2 ruddy ducks one red breasted merganser and one bufflehead. Another great day on the water. 

The brant video above was taken the day before. the in boat clip was from the day of this hunt.

Captain Al Lorenzetti

1/5/2010

Today I hunted with Nick Santos. We had a pretty good morning bagging two brant and a merganser. Not great but better than sitting at home and it was a beautiful sunrise. Here I am letting go with my Benelli Super Black Eagle II on an elusive duck. I am shooting black cloud and you can see the hull exiting the gun and the pattern hitting the water. Fun stuff.

Here are Nick and Captain Al (right to left) with Buddy Cipoletti taking the photos. Buddy took this photo and the one above.

Jeff Butta and his crew with a nice bunch of eider and old squaw taken on the ocean. They had to fight the fog but had a great day of gunning.

George also got into the act with a couple of ducks and brant. 

George and Frankie did a trip near Fire Island Inlet and had some fun. Here is Frankie with a brant.

Last week I hunted almost every day with Rich Santos. We had some good days and some not so good days. We bagged a mix of brant, broadbill, redheads and buffleheads.

This was a nice afternoon with a beautiful sunset.

Nick Santos and Jim Conte waiting for the ducks to come.

I hunted in the morning with Nick Santos. We set up early and waited on dawn.

Birds were flying but not very interested in our rig.

The same situation as I had last week in Freeport with huge bunches of birds. The broadbill are just looking for big black patches of their own and not very interested in a couple of dozen decoys. A couple of dumb ones came by and we had some shots and bagged a couple. 

I knocked down a bird and a second later a peregrine  falcon flew over our heads and headed for the downed bird.

It tried a few times to pick it up out of the water but couldn't quite grab it. A bunch of seagulls were harassing it and it finally gave up.

The bird that I killed and that the falcon was trying to grab was this beautiful redhead.

I didn't actually know it was a redhead because of the back lighting. He was flying with scaup and looked just like one of them when silhouetted so I was very surprised when we retrieved it. 

It was a good morning hunt. Nicky and I had a good time.

Another good day on the water.

Captain Al Lorenzetti

I hunted the afternoon shift with Rich and Nick Santos (right/left). We had a fun shoot in local waters.

The broadbill are in the Great South Bay in big numbers and we bagged a couple and a brant as well.

It was a good afternoon on the water.

I hunted today with Jim Falotico on his 17 TDB. We hunted to the west around Freeport. Jim's boat is top notch and he has rigged it to the max. Beautiful decoys.

There were at least 15,000 brant in the area but not a lot of other waterfowl. We saw a few bufflehead and a few black duck but not much else.

We bagged a couple of brant and bufflehead.

It was a beautiful day but pretty cold. Jim had to break ice with a big ax in order to launch our boat in the morning.


We set out our decoys and waited on the birds. There were a lot of birds flying but not many coming to the decoy. I think there are just so many brant around that they are used to landing with hundreds and not interested in a dozen decoys. We had some passing shots and it was a good morning on the water.


Another memorable day of hunting.


Captain Al Lorenzetti

I did a sea duck shoot today with Rich Santos and his son Nick.

We had a good shoot taking our limit by about 1 pm. 

There was a ton of bait around and some herring to the west of the inlet. A bunch of boats scored real good with bass on jigs to 25 pounds south of Tobay in about 50 feet of water. The fish are on the move now. The east area by Davis Park was also red hot again on Sunday.

Fishing and hunting are real good so get out there.

Another great day on the water.

Captain Al Lorenzetti