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Rick wrote:Still getting to work the dogs around some ducks, but it's become Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" for geese. Heard a speck but couldn't find it early this morning, which put me in mind of what a treat it is just to hear the first few in October. Then late in the morning, two buzzed by very low from behind acting more like teal than geese. Maybe courting. Maybe just messing with me...

Only 7 months and you'll be back hearing them geese again. Canada geese here all over the place making nests and sleeping on black parking lots at night (at the mall). lol

Had a chance to do a kindness for the new owner of what's long been my favorite piece of Louisiana last week and was repaid by once again being able to run the dogs on what is for me is sacred ground and "introduce" young Marsh to the five of his predecessors buried there. And maybe, just maybe they're giving him a hand, because what I've been calling "the worst marking dog ever" has shown great improvement when worked there. Knock wood.

Anyway, I know some of the fellows who once rented blinds from us back there at least used to browse here occasionally and thought they might enjoy seeing the teepee that now passes for the turnaround blind as much as I did:

Hard to tell what had happened there, as the old blind is still just out of that frame to the right:


Even though Klondike Flyers was going back and forth down the middle of it, there were still quite a few bluewings and whistling ducks, along with a sprinkling of spoons and coots.

Wow.,,,,,just, wow..

That "bad location" is now someone else's problem, but here's a shot I took during the split of one I listened to a lot of "birds don't go there" bitching about across the road from you:


Y'all's piece is just out of the picture on the left horizon line.

ha! A+ brushing job there;

"Can't imagine why they're flaring!?"

I've never been in a position to watch it, but the farmer's told me that NE corner of the farm has the sandiest ground and is where the geese want to be. Dunno. Do know the blind looked like something on the Maginot Line:

Jarren wrote:I could see that blind from the road and the people standing in it most days.


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Same for us.

One of those blinds had some sort of reflective trinket on it. I thought it was a gun laying on top of the blind but it was always there, occupied or not. We watched early one morning while one blind chunked a duck or dummy in the air, shot and sent the dog through the decoys. This went on for a half dozen times, or more. No more rest areas, and I think it proves that money doesn't instantly make you a duck hunter.

"I paid for this blind, and by God I'm gonna shoot my gun."

Long ago resigned myself to expect that crap from Joe Whacker, but I still stay pissed off at our "guides" who think they're doing their hunters a favor by letting them whack away at stupid stuff.

Rick wrote:"I paid for this blind, and by God I'm gonna shoot my gun."

Long ago resigned myself to expect that crap from Joe Whacker, but I still stay pissed off at our "guides" who think they're doing their hunters a favor by letting them whack away at stupid stuff.

It's a sure bet to never have to log a DNS at end of the hunt.....

They'd have to be in the air to be seen near that blind from the parish road, as it's on the west side of the farm's center grass road and up almost even with the farmhouse. Lots of levees between it and the gravel.

Meanwhile, the guys on the west farm all cried about the flight being on the east farm, while the guys on the east farm said they all flew on the west farm. The only thing all agreed on was that the birds flew over someone else's blind. Oh, and that those guys were skybusting sons of bitches.

It was quiet out there four or five years ago and has since turned into a circus. Let me know when they all leave, what ever year that might be.

My guess is that they'll all just trade blinds and keep on carrying on.

This thread has me looking through old pictures I have on this computer of our time out there. This picture was from a hunt 4 years ago, makes me sad. I've been sending some to Blake and he sent back, "it's too painful to look back" stop sending them.

You know it was good when the spoons don't make the hero shot.

Took a short video clip of young Marsh this morning that may help explain why he still sometimes acts like a young pup:



Some moron is still talking baby talk to him.

He's a mess.

Happy dog. Is that place in front of the lodge?


I need to get Ellie some time in a swimming depth marsh environment. Her experience has been nothing but ag fields from the the start of her career, and I think It might be helpful to give her a good taste of what might be her next job.

No, we've always referred to it as "behind the camp" or "in the back," but it's actually due west, through the gate at the end of the road, and that clip was taken over a mile so. I also took this shot back there:


So, it's not a place where you'd want a dog in deep, open water. Then, too, when the "little marsh," which I believe you're thinking of, was dried by drought a few years back, I took these where a bigger one that had been holding in the borrow ditch drug out:




Neither has been caught, but others would move in if they were. Bottom line being that I no longer have meaningful gator safe training water, now that the sweet training pond that was "mine" went with the bulk of the Dixie land we lost last year, rather than to the fellow who lets me on "in the back". So we stay to places either too shallow for big tatailles to feel secure or too weed choked for them to get around and hunt easily.

Your situation might be better, as I've seen some sweet training water outside Maurice at Cajun HRC tests, and there may well still be the designated training ponds at Moore Park that we used in my Lafayette days. Fellow named Benny Landry is who I'd want to talk to about the private water, as he's super nice and has been training in that area since the '80s.

That is a huge gator.

Dammit man, that is a dinosaur Rick

Wish I'd had the presence of mind to photograph the one in the little marsh when I had my only chance, as he's the biggest I've seen this side of the Basin, and the only one I saw there that could have been bigger was a whole lot farther away. But I had two nutria hunting orthopods from Philly with me and had my hands full keeping them from plinking him.

Weather looks rough your way right now, and moving at us in a hurry.

Made me mow as much as I could of my ditches first thing this morning, and while it initially roared in, is now steady enough to make me wish I'd mowed everything yesterday. Oh, well...

I cut what I could at my place Monday afternoon, still some wet spots. I'd sure like a dry spell, for a change.