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Haven't been seeing as many teal as expected this time of year and made a conscious effort to find some this morning without success. Wasn't much of anything anywhere, at least that could be seen from the road, but I finally ran into these things:

Damn that's a lot of good looking pins. I could count on my hands how many I've seen back home.

Would love to know why just pintails?

Last big bunch we bumped on our morning hikes was nearly all mottleds and mallards with no pins I could spot, and the scads of teal and spoons we expect to see most everywhere at this time are AWOL.

That is a good question. I've only seen divers in a segregated group like that.

Seems pretty common with pins:

If piss me the fuck off if a decent group of pins ever come in like mallards or teal do. I'd be afraid to shoot since I'd likely end up with 3 when the smoke cleared. Wouldn't be used to having to hold back.

Our best chance to make that sort of pintail mess this season went to hell when I called the shot and a pile of spoons swung around from behind the blind and nearly collided with the bunch of pins we'd been focused on coming from the front. Was bedlam over the mudhole, and when the smoke cleared, I'd killed the only sprig I could pick out in range after my guys started in, and neither of them had shot anything but spoons.

Don'tcha know I thought of Assateague.

Rick wrote:Our best chance to make that sort of pintail mess this season went to hell when I called the shot and a pile of spoons swung around from behind the blind and nearly collided with the bunch of pins we'd been focused on coming from the front. Was bedlam over the mudhole, and when the smoke cleared, I'd killed the only sprig I could pick out in range after my guys started in, and neither of them had shot anything but spoons.

Don'tcha know I thought of Assateague.

Wasn't us but sure sounds like a hoot

I don't recall what we were seeing the most of when you were here, but it seemed like pintail flights were more prevalent this past season than most, yet we didn't kill many. And since the subject of this thread set me to thinking on that, I checked the species log and found that in during the four seasons since I've changed my decoy spread to one with pintail decoys to one without, our average has dropped from 55 pins a year to just 40.

While I'd perceived that sort of trend before checking the numbers, I've been attributing it to the decrease in open water on my end of the marsh, and still believe that a significant factor. But it's a safe bet you'll see a few pintail decoys prominently displayed front and center if you visit the mudhole again next year.

I recall seeing a good many high flights of them but only a few broke in any form, no groups finished; log says we took 1 on day 2. We're planning to return if you'll have us!

What was the verdict on rice field pins this season in your circles? I'd actually intended on getting some of the new "fancy" pin dekes for last season and make them a prominent feature of my spread even though we seldom put eyes on them. But ended up letting my logic of "they'll take up too much room in the deke bag" prevail and ditching the plan. As it was we only fired on one group of 4 the day before Thanksgiving, taking but 1, and not even realizing what they were entirely until picking up the fallen. Johnny actually ignored them and took a greenhead from a pair that actually cut off the pins as the shot was called, lots of fun!

Edit: and look at all those long tails dangling in the video!

Darren wrote:What was the verdict on rice field pins this season in your circles?

Doug sublet out all but two of our traditionally good ag land duck blinds, and I only got to hunt those on afternoons when next to no ducks were flying, so all my info is second hand, but most accounts heard were of poor duck numbers. Know the two blinds we kept are on what's been about as strong of a pintail farm as any in this area, and the guys struggled most of the season, though for all I know they may have done fairly well on pins and just didn't have anything else around. (Because of our early marsh curfew, I'm often gone before those Thornwell blinds come in.)

Man that's a pretty sight