2015-2016 Season Log

[Rick]

Very local. Rest of our marsh was slow, as was the marsh to our north.

[Rick]

Addendum to 9/23 morning: Tired or lazy?

[Rick]

Date: 9/23

Time: afternoon

Location: mom

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: light easterly

Temperature: too hot

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Were a few with the mottleds in the field when we got there, and what "flight" there was all seemed to be coming from the south end of the same farm.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Most of what little came by pushed off and went on, as if knowing exactly what was up.

Hunters: 1 Ryan (or Brian?)

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Peake

Special Equipment: spinners large and small

Curses: just no birds to speak of and no real movement to be seen far or wide

Kudos: fellow shot well

Birds By Species: 3 bw teal

Photo Ops: Peake with what's become a rare bird: ag land teal


Lagniappe:

[Rick]

Date: 9/24

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: light to moderate ENE

Temperature: started out cool but was plenty warm by curfew

Barometer: 29.95 rising slowly

Moon phase: waxing 83%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: What a difference a day made, was one of, if not the slowest mornings we've seen this season. Precious little of anything moving in the marsh, and most of the gunfire we heard was in the rice to our east.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Thankfully excellent, or we'd of been screwed.

Hunters: 1 John again

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The coyote did some sweat work out on the flotant.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: No birds.

Kudos: Was still a pleasant enough morning with the pressure off since John got to enjoy a shoot-'em-up yesterday.

Birds By Species: 11 bw teal

Photo Ops: Have this character to thank for much of our strap:


Lagniappe:

[DComeaux]

That's a good morning, Rick.

I'll be out there with Blake and my son Justin on Saturday, and the way things are going we would be tickled with 11 birds. Hell, 6 or 8 would be satisfying. I don't like going home with just one or two to clean. The gallon ziplock bag just don't look right...

[Rick]

It's been tough most everywhere I'm aware of, with a whole lot more slow hunts than big ones. Don't know what your neighbors are doing, but suspect being surrounded by mung bushes cuts the distance low, working birds can see your spinners considerably, which has to hurt during these tough years. Know those running small spinners aren't getting the same opportunities as those with big, despite more favorable location, in our marsh and pegging my big one to face the most traveled route on my end has made a great difference in what comes close enough to work.

But all of our ag land has been mighty weak. Again. Third year running that the ag stuff hasn't out-shown the marsh per what had been the norm.

[SpinnerMan]

It's been tough, it's been tough

I shot 4 ducks total last year and 2 of those were mergansers. That's tough.

Love the reports and especially the pics of the coyote

If you can't do it yourself, you have to live vicariously through others that can.

[Bud]

Sir Rick, That second shot of your woodie hen with the green reflection laid out so peacefully in front of her, what a great picture. Wondering what the chances were that being the same bird you "released" earlier on that couldn't fly out your office?

[Rick]

It's been tough, it's been tough

I shot 4 ducks total last year and 2 of those were mergansers. That's tough.

Love the reports and especially the pics of the coyote

If you can't do it yourself, you have to live vicariously through others that can.

I began duck hunting in Ohio, so you can believe I know just how blessed I am in that regard.

[Rick]

Sir Rick, That second shot of your woodie hen with the green reflection laid out so peacefully in front of her, what a great picture. Wondering what the chances were that being the same bird you "released" earlier on that couldn't fly out your office?

Don't know, Bud. But she didn't try to get in the blind with us. Still wondering how that came about, though we once trapped a snow goose that apparently tried to walk over and fell through a well concealed pit blind:




Gave him the same break the woodie got:


But he was so darn cocky about it:


I eventually cut the coyote loose on him to insure he hadn't injured himself beyond flight:

[Rick]

Date: 9/25

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: nil to light easterly

Temperature: cool enough while I was there

Barometer: 29.95 rising slowly

Moon phase: waxing 91%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: slooow with precious few local big ducks seen, let alone teal

Waterfowl Responsiveness: excellent

Hunters: just the coyote and I

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Just one tough, head shot, no less, bird needed tracked.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: only the lack of game

Kudos: Was a great morning not to have guest hunters, most of which probably would have boogered what little there was by jumping early and ended up making a very long morning of it.

Birds By Species: 6 bw teal (5 drakes, one of which had a "hen's" green feet, and 1 hen)

Photo Ops: The coyote's tough bird:


and the last of his easy ones:


Lagniappe:

[Deltaman]

I've often wondered how you were telling the difference between the drakes and hens without the defining plumage, and assuming by your statement above, color of legs is the telltale, is that correct Rick?

[SpinnerMan]

I've often wondered how you were telling the difference between the drakes and hens without the defining plumage, and assuming by your statement above, color of legs is the telltale, is that correct Rick?

My guess is the bills are different and make them easy to tell like mallards, but I'm curious as well.

[Rick]

Some folks look for bright yellow/orange vs gray/green feet or solid black vs speckled bills, but the surest/easiest thing is the color of their greater covert feathers. The drakes' are white, and the hens' are mostly brown with white trim. Bird on the left is a hen and those on the right are all drakes:

[DComeaux]

It's been tough most everywhere I'm aware of, with a whole lot more slow hunts than big ones. Don't know what your neighbors are doing, but suspect being surrounded by mung bushes cuts the distance low, working birds can see your spinners considerably, which has to hurt during these tough years. Know those running small spinners aren't getting the same opportunities as those with big, despite more favorable location, in our marsh and pegging my big one to face the most traveled route on my end has made a great difference in what comes close enough to work.

But all of our ag land has been mighty weak. Again. Third year running that the ag stuff hasn't out-shown the marsh per what had been the norm.

I've had only one big spinner out on the north side until last Sundays solo hunt. I put out two more on the south side to try and turn some of the east west stuff we see just to our south. But you are correct, one was fine 3 and 4 years ago and we'll see what the addition does tomorrow morning, pending bird activity. And yes, we are in a bowl but that didn't seem to matter the first two years. They'd come in low and jump over the Roseau's and mungs skimming the pond in waves. What came by ended up over the decoys. I would have to lean more toward the amount of birds in the given area.



I drove to Houston this morning and in the rice fields from Beaumont west there was only one patch that had a good bit of teal in the air. That was just just a little after LST. On the way back around 9:30 that field still had a swarm buzzing around. I'm thinking you either have the mother load or just get the lost souls looking for the mob, especially when the migration is staggered. We've been in the lost souls category, this year anyway. The last two years the lost souls didn't even show up.

[Rick]

Full camp in the morning, so I'm hoping someone somewhere is loaded up with them - and chases them out going in.

[Deltaman]

Some folks look for bright yellow/orange vs gray/green feet or solid black vs speckled bills, but the surest/easiest thing is the color of their greater covert feathers. The drakes' are white, and the hens' are mostly brown with white trim. Bird on the left is a hen and those on the right are all drakes:

Thanks Rick, good to know!

[DComeaux]

I think I've found a name for the brush we use. Eastern Bacchari, Grondsel tree, Sea Myrtle, salt bush........

[Rick]

I've only heard it called mung and myrtle, but it's very different from wax myrtle, so I've questioned the relationship. If you could find a wax myrtle source, it would stay green appreciably longer and particularly so if you can stick it in water. I used to cut more than needed and keep the extras' cut portions in water to replace that on the blind as needed.

[Rick]

Date: 9/26

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: zip, nadda, none to very light variable

Temperature: Hot and soupy humid

Barometer: 20.89 darn near flat

Moon phase: waxing 97%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: not what I'd hoped for a Saturday but should have been enough

Waterfowl Responsiveness: still excellent aside from a very few that plainly knew the spot of spinners

Hunters: 3 young guns, Cody, Matt and Travis

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Flat cooked Peake trying to recover two long fly-off crips, and had to let him cool off before locating the last two of the other six that went down on flotant.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: If everything the boys said fell where they said it did, we lost four on the pond's west end, where a fairly large gator has been seen poaching in the past.

Kudos: Pleasant morning all the same.

Birds By Species: 18 bw teal

Photo Ops:

Lagniappe:

[Rick]

Date: 9/27

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: raining most of the morning

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE fairly strong while it rained

Temperature: pleasantly cool

Barometer: 29.84 slowly sinking, then rising

Moon phase: full

Special Notes: last day of September teal

Waterfowl Activity: Surprisingly sparse, given what we think of as great teal weather.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Thankfully good, though some birds plainly knew the spot or spinners.

Hunters: 2, buddy hunt with friends Bobby and Rowland

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The coyote couldn't locate a couple of long fly-offs, despite relatively cool conditions.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Only that it wasn't the shoot-'em-up I thought the weather would insure.

Kudos: Nice time with nice guys.

Birds By Species: 15 bw teal

Photo Ops:

Lagniappe:

[Rick]

Was just out in the yard with the dogs, enjoying the fresh feel of weather blowing in and wishing we were on our way down the run to the blind and a morning of trying to snatch teal from the wind. Wingshooting doesn't get any more fun than teal.

Have a ton and a half of things to do, but it's still going to be a long month until the big season.

[Darren]

Was just out in the yard with the dogs, enjoying the fresh feel of weather blowing in and.......

Thought this was going to introduce your first sounds of specks of the season, bummer! Isn't it fairly typical to at least get a few 9th hand reports of specks showing by end of our teal season? Front coming later this week, maybe that will do the trick

[Rick]

Was just out in the yard with the dogs, enjoying the fresh feel of weather blowing in and.......

Thought this was going to introduce your first sounds of specks of the season, bummer! Isn't it fairly typical to at least get a few 9th hand reports of specks showing by end of our teal season? Front coming later this week, maybe that will do the trick

There was a time when it wasn't surprising to see our first specks the last week of teal season, but that's not been the case lately, unreliable reports aside. Have seen online that some are moving into CA, though, so perhaps they'll show here soon, too.

[Rick]

September teal season's end and a rainy morning have conspired to keep me indoors and wracked with withdrawal, so I'm going to take a cue from Darren's log and do an early teal season "wrap-up," only in my standard format:

Date: September Teal

Time: Hunted every morning, but the season in general and afternoons in particular were so poor we had few paying afternoon hunters and I hated to ask friends to sit in the hot sun and watch it go down with us, thus we hunted relatively few afternoons. Most of our afternoon outings consisted of young Marsh and I tagging along with folks who were going anyway and didn't mind having the poorly trained pup along to help as he might. Only those hunts I was more active in than as dog handler were logged as my parties and included in our numbers.

Location: Mudhole every morning and various ag land leases in the afternoons

Cloud Cover: Mostly clear with very few exceptions.

Wind Direction and Velocity: Mostly easterly and light with very few exceptions.

Temperature: Mostly cool early and rapidly warming with very few exceptions.

Barometer:

Moon phase: from none to bright

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: The lack of weather change was reflected in the "flights" we saw, in that the birds seemed settled into safe places most of the time, rather than trafficking much, with the exceptions being weekends when hunting pressure stirred the pot.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: By and large, we had a fairly easy time drawing teal in the marsh and saw more birds blow by our afternoon set-ups. Would like to think the later not being my own part of the ag land problem, but have no way of knowing that.

Hunters: Carried about as wide of a range of hunters as ever, though not so many as in better seasons, when that word is out that there's more interest in teal. Ended up hunting by myself two weekday mornings and with my invited friends the final Sunday.

Guns: I shot one of my Montefeltro 20s with both my favorite 2 3/4" Kent Upland Steel 5s and 2 3/4" Winchester 4s I couldn't develop the same confidence in.

Malfunctions: The most memorable malfunction was an 1100 that spit its operating handle out and wouldn't let it be reinserted or let its bolt be worked with a screwdriver as unbroken bolts can when the handle is lost.

Dog(s): Peake, aka: "the coyote," may be stone deaf but was still a tremendous asset for recovering the many birds that went down on the flotant surrounding my little pothole. Though we surrendered those that might bring him too close to gator water without armed escort. And as he couldn't be stopped for handling directly to blind retrieves, we had to rely on good initial lines or letting him search until he stopped for redirection on his own. The later of which wasted a lot of time and led to overheating problems. More than once had to let him cool off before going back to resume a search successfully.

Then there was young Marsh Fire. His blind manners were surprisingly good, other than a thankfully brief (knock wood) breaking spurt inspired by being paired with someone's breaking dog. But like his namesake, he was wildly out of control when released for retrieves and suddenly as whistle deaf as brother Peake. Would go long and hard before tearing up the field looking for game when lined, but forgot all I ever might have thought he knew about stopping or coming in for the whistle to receive handling direction. And he took one fit of stopping to repeatedly toss a cripple in the air and catch it until I went to meet him about it. Both shortcomings being expressions of the lack of training he's been afforded. Probably didn't handle more than sixteen or eighteen birds total. But the pup was good about the strange people and strange dogs part of his job, was calm at the blind, and he sure do love the game. So the worrisome stuff seems behind us.

Special Equipment: Saw lots of evidence that 'Bigger is better." when it comes to whirligigs, presumably due to increased visibility. Birds could not only see it farther but showed a distinct preference for my full-sized Mojo over the teal one when coming to land. And when a too rare northerly wind turned my pivoting big spinner's wings to face south we started drawing a heck of a lot more birds from their much favored course over the chain of much bigger ponds to my south, so I pegged it to stay flashing north and south (instead of east and west, as prevailing winds would have kept it) with gratifying result. May or may not try that in the big duck season, as then feel its best shifting with the wind to put the white upwind and out of sight of finishing big ducks and geese when stopped in stiff breezes. We'll see.

Curses: Had plenty of the usual "crowd control" frustrations with folks making the gunning harder than need be, but my biggest complaint would be the lack of game seen on ag land hunts.

Kudos: Got to carry a lot of great folks and have a lot of fun, and really can't kick about the amount of opportunity we generally had in the marsh.

Birds By Species: My parties took 255 blue-wing and 1 green-wing teal, which wasn't a lot for us but within one bird of the previous season, when ag land was somewhat better and the marsh not as good.

Photo Ops: My picks of the litter are a poor photo that tells the good story my hope for young Marsh:


and a little better shot of the old man of the marsh still out there saving our bacon:


Lagniappe: Ought to be something more profound to say about our time with this year's September teal, but I'll just note that I miss them already.

[DComeaux]

Nice read, Rick!

Rick » Mon Sep 28, 2015 6:27 am

Was just out in the yard with the dogs, enjoying the fresh feel of weather blowing in and wishing we were on our way down the run to the blind and a morning of trying to snatch teal from the wind. Wingshooting doesn't get any more fun than teal.

Have a ton and a half of things to do, but it's still going to be a long month until the big season.

I was feeling the exact same this morning when I walked out of the house this morning and would no doubt have been out there if possible. The only issue is this little low confidence bastard sitting on my shoulder as of late that dampens my good weather feeling of confidence. With that said, we are satisfied with the teal seasons outcome and looking forward to things to come. We are 30 birds higher than last year with less hunters per hunt and one less hunt made than last year.

[Rick]

I don't know what's up with the ag land teal. Know of spots both NE of Gueydan and near Thornwell that gave up on mornings entirely but had excellent afternoon hunting, but our Thornwell stuff never turned on, morning or afternoon, and much the same could be said of it in Klondike and south of Gueydan. And all those places were teal strongholds until three seasons ago.

[Rick]

Just looked at the first year we had your farm and see my parties took 149 teal there in 12, mostly afternoon, hunts.

[DComeaux]

Just looked at the first year we had your farm and see my parties took 149 teal there in 12, mostly afternoon, hunts.

We did talk about trying an afternoon hunt or two during this teal season, but DAMN, it was hot. We've tried a few afternoon hunts on that place over the years and they were not successful. The first two years for teal on that place we we're finished and out of the blind while the sun was just showing on the horizon most mornings, with 4 men. We got to watch a show while walking out.

[Rick]

It's a mystery that's looking more like a trend than an anomaly with each passing season.