Drake Canvass Back: is it mount worthy?

Mount

that is a mature drake with decent plumage, which is pretty hard to get your hands on. They are a little more common in some areas (Catahoula Lake), but you don't see a hell of a lot of them in most places. I wouldn't call them rare, but they you don't kill them every day either.

the distinguishing feature is that big, sloped forehead, so if I was going to have one mounted, I'd probably have it standing or sitting on water.

FWIW, canvasbacks were the main duck hunted and sold during the old market hunting days.

Market hunting refers to the time when there was no limit on ducks and it was legal to sell them as meat. people used some strange contraptions like skiffs with really large shotguns mounted in them (i.e. 2 gauges, etc.). they would slip out to a raft of canvasbacks in open water and fire off one of these large guns and then pick up all of the dead ducks on the water!

canvasbacks are some of the only diving ducks that are decent to eat.

That’s some serous hunting there.

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This is the kind of thing that the market hunters used:

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Here are a couple of the shells they used. That is a 12 ga on the top.

Just curious, what did you consider better ducks?

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Market hunting refers to the time when there was no limit on ducks and it was legal to sell them as meat. people used some strange contraptions like skiffs with really large shotguns mounted in them (i.e. 2 gauges, etc.). they would slip out to a raft of canvasbacks in open water and fire off one of these large guns and then pick up all of the dead ducks on the water! canvasbacks are some of the only diving ducks that are decent to eat.

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Yep, my Dad did market hunting way back in the day. Pirogue with a mounted punt gun.

All were lost in Katrina.

Yes...definitely. I killed a black pheasant 2 years ago (a rare melanistic mutant) and I didn't mount him. Regretted it ever since. A canvasback in that part of the world is worth mounting.