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Waterfowl Hunting at Wingate Point
Honga River, Keese Property
12/26/07
Mark Burchick

	Mark and I spent the day waterfowl hunting with Dan Betz at the 200-acre Keese Property.  The dominant marsh vegetation included loblolly pine, eastern red cedar, hightide bush, wax myrtle, switchgrass, black needle rush, shortform cordgrass, salt meadow hay, phragmites and planted milo.  The pond we hunted over is freshwater, with the difference of the property being salt marsh, south of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Honga River and Chesapeake Bay.
	A sunrise view from the duck blind looking back to the Keese House and Honga River.
	Mark battened down the hatches and fell asleep for a few minutes.
	Around 10:00 AM we walked out to Fox Point to see if we could ambush some birds in a 'closed' pond behind the phragmites.
	We walked around a series of ponds and Dan felled a mallard on the wing. The overhead shot dropped the bird right at our feet!  If I had been a second or two faster, I could have caught the bird like a football kick-off dropping from the sky.
	Vast miles of black needle rush.
	Dan's newly adopted Chesapeake Bay Retriever, named Bear, was fairly well trained. If not for Bear, we would have not found one of two mergansers that fell into dense shoreline vegetation.
	Another view of the circle or horse-shoe ponds.  We walked to a cemetery on the property that contained generations of the extended Wingate family, dating from 1750, up thru 1899. It was neat to think that the originating Wingate's pre-dated the American Revolution and settled lower Dorchester County, while under British rule, with many of the Wingate's living thru both the founding of the United States and our War between the States.
	Dan and Mark in the duck blind, with Mark wearing the nutria fur hat (right).  We were able to call in Canada geese, but none quite close enough to shoot at.  We put out mallard, teal and goose decoys, which helped flying birds take a second look at our pond.  The blinds were well camouflaged and blended into the banks.
	In the course of sunrise to sunset, we bagged a mallard and two hooded mergansers. We saw lots of geese, swans, flocks of high flying waterfowl and many well worn sika deer trails throughout the property.  It rained much of the day and if the winds would have been stronger, I'd bet that the large flocks out on the Honga would have considered our ponds for safe harbor.

Thank you Dan Betz for a great day of hunting in the "Land of Pleasant Living."
Submitted By Mark Burchick