2016-2017 Season Log

[Ericdc]

Northeast winds are our most productive wind also followed closely by SW.


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[Ducaholic]

Give me NNE 5-10 Sunny and Cold with the 5 at daylight and I'll kill lots of ducks every time.

[Ericdc]

Rick how do you get back in the blind after parking the boat? The boat hide isn't directly behind the blind correct? Or no?

Unless it's changed since we hunted its right behind the blind.

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[Rick]

It's under the grass flotant in front of the boat (with dogs) in the photo of the flipped blind above. And I was still doing the annual boat hide flotant/sludge grinding when this better, lower water shot was taken last year, but its the first I came to that shows the layout:


I rebuilt and heightened it some this year, so the dog, which has to go through the boat to most readily work what falls to our south (without danger of impaling himself on old 2x staubs) could do so more readily in high water and to move the front cross-member closer to the dog stand (blind entrance) and firm it up for folks needing its support to more readily get in and out of the boat. Still a simple structure of 2x4s, 2x2s and hog wire that can be readily disassembled and moved out of the way for blind replacement - or to right a popped and rolled blind as in last season's case.

When in use, I hang a homemade mat of canes over the entrance hole and back of the Go-Devil:

[Rick]

Assuming the party can hold their water as birds pass close around or over the blind In northerly winds, we shoot our ducks trying to go away against the wind when the guns come up. Sort of like popping balloons. Specks we'll generally take as they come, as they're less likely to make it past the blind without catching us. But birds falling behind the blind are tough for the dog to mark accurately or for me to handle it to because of the canes, the blind's thin "island" flotant is a booger for him to cross, and there's some serious bad stuff to work back there. Less we have to recover in the back, the better.

As the blind faces NW, that's the most problematic wind for us, as finishing birds are too often dropping right over the blind and have the best chance of catching us doing something we shouldn't too soon and blowing back out with that wind. Anything but that is easy pickings over a 30-yard wide pond - or should be...

[Rick]

Here's the Mudhole in the middle of the image:


And it's layout:


I'd not blown this image up enough to see that I'm in it until Eric brought it to my attention, but it tickles me to note that I'm the fly poop looking speck in the front of the boat at the north end of the pond. Happened to be out there cutting or pulling fourchettes in preparation for the 2014 opener when the shot was taken.

[Rick]

the deceiver is proven louder by the graph on my wavepad--no doubt louder

louder then rm CWF ,even louder then my lares t1 with a 1.375 reed

it seems cleaner,tighter feel running wise,more built in backpressure

it seems to have more natural bend in the syllables of the cadence

Thanks for the review. FIle sounds like the bored-out version is still quite manageable, but that the above didn't read, "Holy crap that thing's loud!" was a little disappointing.

Though, more seriously, I'm already concerned enough about not just my ability to run mine's presumably standard bore wide open long enough to take real advantage of its volume but about the ears around it. Once had a fellow next to me in the blind tease that it wasn't the guns that deafened my old dog but the MVP, and while he might just have been picking, there may well have been something to it. Know I became a lot more conscious of where I'm pointing it after that, and that I managed to hurt my own ears behind the Deceiver at one point while tuning it to suit, which is something I'd never done with any call. Maybe echo off an office wall, maybe a dangerous weapon...

Either way, I sure am anxious to give it a go on a day when the MVP is falling short.

[Ericdc]

It is a LOT of fun breaking specks from a good ways away or way up over you. Had fun with the new redbone doing that this year. Will be a lot better this fall after I practice all summer.


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[Rick]

Back on course with some more of the 2016-2017 Season Wrap-up:

Hunters: One of the things that jumped out at me while browsing the log was how often my parties were father and son, so I did a quick count and came up with sixteen such. Way to many to show them all, so I'm going with the first such of the regular season, Joel and Joel on opening day:


Then, too, there were grandfathers with grandsons:


At least a couple sets of uncles with nephews:


And a few sets of brothers:


Flat neat to host so many family trips. But also sad not to see a couple of the father and son pairs we've come to look forward to, hopefully due to good circumstances, rather than ill.

Sadly, we did lose a great camp favorite and family man, Nathan Bush, for good this past summer, shown here with his grandson, Hunter (center) and a friend of Hunter's:


Mention "gentleman," and Nathan will come to many of our minds - and be missed all over again. Feel blessed to think of his example often.

Am also thankful that so many of our fine, long time friends still join us and for all the new ones we met this year. The overwhelming majority of my parties were great folks.

"Blessed" is a word I find myself using more and more, and it's not becoming a cliche, just exactly the right one.


Guns: This is a seldom used subject line with only three standout entries coming to mind. I'll kick the bad one to the curb and out of the way first by pointing out the O/U curse continues with the only one to darken my blind this season having been ported behind its choke tubes and doing its best to deafen everyone but the oblivious fellow behind it. Just not fair to ever bring a ported gun to a shared blind, but especially so in the case of a short one like most O/Us.

The two guns drawing notice for being nifty examples were brought by the same good gentleman and collector, John, who has hunted with me for what's become decades. One was a Remington Model 48 20ga, which was a new gun to me. The other a 16ga Model 12 I'd seen and admired many times over our years together - and turned down on a couple of the most recent ones, as something of a parting gift from the friend age has been gaining the upper hand on, with a "Just bring it back next year." This time the offer was made in a manner I couldn't pass off, and it's become a prized possession. Albeit not one I've managed much of a job of giving its due:


Yet.


Malfunctions: As always, the most common entry here was "bent barrels". Next in number, had I bothered to track it, would have been "operator error". Too commonly saw "Benelli clicks" from easing the bolt forward in a manner that prevented the bolt face from locking in both that make and in others now copying Benelli's bolt, like Browning and Remington. And one inexperienced operator even had to be stopped from continuing to try prying a round from his gun's magazine with a pocket knife and needed shown that depressing the carrier latch was a whole lot easier. No telling how many other gun hiccups were actually human ones, but that definitely was mechanical were the two Beretta Extrema magazines that came apart at the cap threads, albeit on "well used" examples.

Also had two recurring spinner malfunctions: an electronic one eventually traced to apparently mouse eaten insulation allowing a hot wire to ground against the steel pit blind, and metal wings cracked by high winds. Hopefully rereading this before next season, if not the two traps left in the blind, will remind me to use the later more religiously next year, and I'll do a better job inspecting the new wings for the beginnings of cracks and detecting their true ends for proper stop-drilling.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Rick]

As with your .375 reeded T-1, that sounds like an appreciably longer reed than I settled on in my Deceiver - and I'm not sure I can run it loud and long enough to accomplish anything beyond what I can do with my most open-bored and longest-reeded MVP. But I can get on it harder with sharper pitch.

Took it to a place where I'd not feel a fool really leaning into it this morning to settle on a reed to begin next season with and feel quite hopeful about the result. But we'll see...

[Rick]

back at it...


Dog(s): This was a season of major change in this category, as "the bug," Marsh, replaced "the coyote," Peake, as our working dog. Peake's hearing has long been gone to the point of being not just a nuisance, particularly with regard to handling on blind retrieves, but a very real hazard when the water is warm enough for gators to feed and he can't hear even the loudest whistle to stop or recall from a dangerous course. And this year on late season just-he-and-me hunts, he showed his heart is no longer in them, either. Now 10, his hard-used body is no longer what it once was, but he's still a relatively healthy endorphin addict that loves getting out and finding a way to work his bony old butt off in whatever water he can find. He's just plainly not nearly so happy to hunt or even retrieve as he'd long been. Still loves "going," just not hunting:


Don't know that I'm as ready for his full retirement as he seemed by season's end, and I will likely take him when it can be just the two of us again next season, particularly for September teal when the weather's nice, action is fast and he seemed to still be enjoying himself:




But the unexpected change in the old dog's attitude, as well as his simply not seeming to mind, did make it much easier to leave him at the house while the young one and I went to work. Which brings us to what one guest gun characterized as my "peculiar looking little dog":


Wish I could say I had the bug ready to go, particularly since that was supposed to be a point of special prior off-season focus, but we once again spent far more field time letting Peake do his thing than on Marsh and my doing ours. Marsh's basic OB was solid enough to be safe during hazardous times, but his steering (handling) was far from tight enough to be as effective as he should have been, particularly early on in the season. Then, too, there was a little spat of uncharacteristic breaking during the late goose-only season which, I hope, has been adequately dealt with. And I'd not want to forget (well, I would want to) that we butted heads badly over whether he should reward himself for finds with pieces torn from them: once during September teal and six more times early in the first regular season spit. Seems to have put that temptation behind him, but we'll have a very close eye on his pigeon handling this off-season, all the same.

On the plus side, the bug's blind manners were generally much better than our hunters', and I doubt he ran much of anything off. Know I couldn't be happier with how readily he adapted to working the flotant or the inherent and learned hunt he displayed. In that regard, he lived up to his registered name: Marsh Fire. Was also well pleased with how his marking, which I once questioned, has come along. Like his handling, that perceived shortcoming was most likely his trainer's.

A final plus, perhaps especially given what seems the general public's perception of his Chesapeake breed, our hunters took a shine to the bug:


Special Equipment: On this front, the practice I'd begun last season of pegging our spinner for greatest visibility from the teals' favored flyways to our north and south seemed to pay off again both for September blue-wings and in the regular season. And the modified Mallard Machine splasher continued to be a boon for the little ducks, if not the big ones, for which it continues to appear a moot or iffy propostition. Did manage to wear another MM switch out and, so, converted it to a virtually wear-proof hot wire version.

One new and one pre-log "old" item that would fall under this category, but I don't think were previously entered as such, were a ghillie cape for me and blanket for the dog to use when we goose hunted very open ground. Both simple squares of die-cut nylon(?) camouflage material, one with a wooden clothes pin zip-tied where it serveS to fasten the cape's collar around my neck and the other with a small tent peg zip-tied to one corner to keep the blanket from going with the dog on retrieves. Accompanying these in my day pack was a bag of z-ties and clothes pins for attaching natural vegetation to the cape and blanket. With said appropriately brushed blanket over a deadgrass colored dog and a camo clothed and masked me kneeling and bent over under the appropriately brushed cape, I'm pretty confident we presented the least possible blips in otherwise virtually unhuntable locations. Which isn't to say doing so didn't suck for old knees.

Curses: The curse that lives on my mind is my inability to convince many of our guests of their need to help hide themselves from game - or to find a way to eliminate that need without making the shooting part of the puzzle more problematic than it already is. I'm confident that my current use of canes, both now natural to the blind's island and imported for the season only, is a big help from most angles, albeit at some cost to guns not accustomed to shooting through cover, as no doubt was raising the boat hide "roof" behind us. But there are still way too many faces and too much motion showing way too often.

And I've been wondering of late if not just mentioning that masks are a good thing that let us get away with much more for those that have them but always wearing my own as a further "hint," regardless of whether I'm the only one doing so. I don't like wearing a mask any more than the next guy, so when no one else in the blind is, I settle for following game's flight and calling from behind the cover a camouflage sleeved off arm - a habit so ingrained I do it when wearing a mask, as well. But it may just be that I should set a better example...

Kudos: Chief among these on a personal level is that my impatience with problematic guests isn't listed as a "curse," as it so often has been in my past. I feel like I did pretty darn well, for a welcome change, in that regard this season. Maybe I'm finally growing up. (Or just becoming more forgetful.) I'm certain it didn't hurt that this year's hunters were such a great group of folks. Maybe not great hunters in many cases, but great human beings in most all, which carries much more weight with me these days.

And I'm grateful for the relatively strong hunting we usually enjoyed. Flat eats my lunch when I can't show good people good hunting, and that wasn't the case as often this season as its sometimes been.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Deltaman]

"Kudos: Chief among these on a personal level is that my impatience with problematic guests isn't listed as a "curse," as it so often has been in my past. I feel like I did pretty darn well, for a welcome change, in that regard this season. Maybe I'm finally growing up. (Or just becoming more forgetful.) I'm certain it didn't hurt that this year's hunters were such a great group of folks. Maybe not great hunters in many cases, but great human beings in most all, which carries much more weight with me these days. "

Rick, glad you are going in the right direction with your attitude towards problematic guests, and know that it can sometimes flat boil your blood. I find myself becoming less patient as I age, and have to catch myself before opening my mouth sometimes.
I have thoroughly enjoyed your log again this year, and your recap is always as educational as it is entertaining.
Kudos to you brother, and Thank You again for taking us along

[DComeaux]

"Deltaman I find myself becoming less patient as I age, and have to catch myself before opening my mouth sometimes.

I have this same affliction creeping up on me, and I haven't seemed to be able to wave it off in time, on a few occasions. I attribute it to the "enough is enough" feeling I get now in those situations. Not something I've felt immediately, or at all when I was younger. I guess I'm just getting mentally tired of the BS!

[Rick]

Might want to note that my reference to "guests" was pretty narrow. This was the year I finally said "Enough!" and quit being the buffer between Doug and his landowners, farmers and lessees. Well, for the most part...

[Rick]

Birds By Species: We finished our 2016-2017 with 1,176 birds (none banded) of thirteen duck and one goose species. Far from a record high, but comfortably above our previous nine season average of just over 1,100.

That only 17 of our birds were geese, all specks, smashed last season's record low for my years of Louisiana goose hunting and can be attributed in largest part to having quit taking afternoon parties after the first two. Just tired of the work and frustration of making sorry blinds workable only to find that effort destroyed by our ace "guides" or, if the blind is particularly promising, sublet out by the big cheese when I try to return to it.

Of happier note, was our Mudhole record 334 green-wing teal. That green-wing total came as a surprise set up by following a particularly poor first split take with a second split better than three times as strong. May well just have been largely happenstance (IE: more birds meeting better shooters), but I suspect that both last season's "old" record and this new one are in appreciable part attributable to the change made to keep the spinner facing their favored flyways, and this new high take is without question at least in part due to my improved attitude toward the prospect of tolling particularly high flights.

Ringnecks also made a notably strong, and perhaps record, show of 100. They followed their general trend of being more susceptible during the first split, when we shot nearly two thirds of our total, presumably because they tend to become marsh residents that learn the ropes, rather than passers-by. Hard to say how much,if any, of the uptick in their appearance on the strap might be attributed to what seemed improved response to burring on the squacky DC over cleaner calls. Could well just be that fewer other ducks had me trying harder to pull the jacks from their favored courses.

Wood ducks definitely set a new bar at 39. They simply seemed to have hung around the marsh offering opportunity much longer than normal. We expect them to be thick during the September teal season, presumably by virtue of having brought their broods there to take advantage of abundant invertebrate proteins, but to have all but abandoned the marsh by the time the regular season rolls around. But this year, while the first split was the stronger of the two, we still shot more woodies in the second than in most or, likely, all prior Mudhole seasons. Though we definitely saw fewer later, what we saw remained pretty susceptible to woodie squeals (sweeeeets) squeezed from a speck call throughout.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Rick]

Photo Ops: The file counts on their internet host site, Photobucket, tells me I took the fewest photos of this season's waterfowling of any since 2008-2009. Would like to think that reflects my focus on making it work for our hunters, and in some cases that was so. But I know I also got discouraged by ill results do to poorer lighting than my little camera could cope with and my own laziness played a role, as well. Regardless, this season's photo crop was a disappointment, and I hope reading this before the next will serve as reminder to strive to do better, particularly with in-blind candids.

That said, here are some of what I found the more interesting grabs:

[Rick]

[Rick]

[Rick]

Lagniappe: At long last -The End

[Darren]

Between that flamingo and that fella's silly hat

great season review, always fun to recount how it all went down. My mind is largely elsewhere on other hobbies and projects for now but Johnny was recently quick to remind me that he's eager to get out to Bunkie to work on the lil camp out there so maybe he'll be the one to push the effort. Considering how little I've heard from anyone else involved, he and I may be the only crew to actually enact half of the actions we all swore to for the offseason.

[Rick]

Thanks to all for coming along and, especially, to Olly for providing the space.

[Darren]

Got my usual end of season account from in-laws Saturday while visiting over that way for Easter, said they had best season in 10 years 'round the corner. Mostly teal but they had a big time more often than not. Hope to make a visit there in '17

[Rick]

Good to hear. Think Henry had told me they were above par, but then Robert said they'd not seen the hoped for boost from the bazillion teal to their north, except for once when a survey crew or some-such passed through them. Sounds like that changed. Haven't yet talked to anyone from the Chapman crew to their west. Or had the presence of mind to ask Clark how Cherry Ridge finished - but it may be meaningful that he's not made a point of telling me. Just had to be better than their first split, though.