2016-2017 Season Log

[Rick]

A smarter fellow would have checked point of impact before heading to the field, but I suspect it's just unfamiliarity and perhaps the effect of luck on a tiny sample. Will get around to finding a piece of poster board and abandoned barbwire fence eventually, but like the gun so much I'd hate to learn it's seriously flawed.

[Rick]

leave well enough alone then,putting on paper may really mess with head

My "goose gun" is a SBE I bought the second or third year HK imported them that the paper showed to shoot just a bit high, which suited me fine. But you'll notice I'm using past tense, because its stock modified choke eventually split end to end, and my hillbilly gunsmithing efforts with an easy-out have left the end of the barrel looking somewhat cattywampus.

Still seems to kill as well as ever within my own capabilities, and I've so far resisted the nagging urge to put it back on paper. Scared to find out...

[Rick]

Nothing but lots of geese today. Had a flight of fifty or so hit the far end of the big laser-leveled field a little before seven without much more than a turn into the wind, and after that watched another couple hundred specks and even a fair flight of light geese pile in around them. Had a few newcomers tease me by swinging to the call and getting almost right but nothing in the rock chucking range I wanted, and probably needed, in the fairly stiff wind, but everything ended up with the mob in such a wide open place there's no chance of hiding nearby.

Am feeling a little like the cat who romanced the skunk and didn't get all he wanted, just all he could stand.

Best new was that Marsh didn't raise up for any of our close calls except once when I did, too, and neither of us broke/shot on that misjudged bird that showed us just how strong the wind was.

May bag it for a while, if not the remaining season.

[Bud]

I fill out my late-season "blues" reading this log. Always learn something new, relate to something old, and hate to see the season's end approaching. Bought a small, plastic one-step fold-up to use in tight spots. My knees and back can't handle your method any longer. Trying to remember it when I need it is another thing. Duct tape it from bumping while walking, and a shoulder strap works great. Wife had it in the kitchen, so I bought another one. Helps to tie shoes now, too.

Lot of folk in other parts of the country treasure taking a speck like shooting a turkey, if they can get one. Tripping a late-season speck is an awesome feat, especially when they have a live crowd right over yonder. Thanks for sharing all you share, Sir Rick: yours was my only duck season this year. Hope you kill a couple more. If not, then by all means you sure know how to pick a home.

[Rick]

Bud, first and foremost, I'm sorry to hear you didn't get out at all this year. Hate that for you.

I've a small ammo can sized plastic box for my September teal stuff that makes a great little seat and beats hell out of knelling or sitting on the ground when conditions allow. But the parts of this field the birds aren't totally spooked by doesn't have more than thin edges of a couple feet tall sparse vegetation along the edges of otherwise clean levees - where there's any at all. Been using a small ghillie blanket of the brown camo netting with natural to the edge vegetation z-tied to clothes pins and clipped to it for the pup and a matching ghillie shawl that covers my shoulders and back or all off me when I kneel and kiss Mother Earth - and we're still a couple odd lumps.

Slept in past 4:30 this morning, piddled around the house a while and had coffee with the Tiger Mart BS team this morning. Which was wonderful. But I'll be surprised if I don't have the itch again by next week.

[Rick]

Video of the goose chase was pretty entertaining.
Which brings a question, I've seen some pictures with marsh bringing back crippled ducks, why not water swat them before you send him?
Or is that something you just like to let the dog handle?
I guess letting clients take care of crips on open water could be dangerous for your decoys

Sorry I missed this earlier. My pond is only 30yds across, and there isn't a lot of it where crips can be shot without destroying them as table fare or collateral damage to decoys. But when those aren't issues, we do shoot what crips we safely can on the pond, with the rule being that I do it unless I ask a guest to do so. The later of which generally isn't problematic but got two decoys centered this year.

Given that it takes a bit for me to break the camera out and running, however, it's a very safe bet that most of the crips in my photos went down on the flotant beyond the pond, where finishing shots are almost never possible.

And as for the video. I really should have shot that bird during the first few seconds, when I could safely do so, but that good deed fell to the impulse to get footage of Marsh diving for it - which, it turns out, didn't happen. That said, my record with the Model 12 suggests I'd have just chipped it again, anyway...

[Rick]

Just couldn't stand not going any longer but found a truck parked on the east end of the dry piece I'd been hunting and went on to the crawfish water blind I'd tried earlier.

Shortly after LST three specks came over the farm, spun to the call, made a turn around the decoys and then downwind to line up low and square at the blind. Thought I could kill my pair with the Model 12's barrel, but true to form, they were smart enough to push to the side of the sore thumb blind. Still plenty close enough to kill a pair, so I pulled well ahead of the second farthest - and only managed to make him jerk his head back between his shoulder blades before peeling away with the strong wind. So I switched to the closest - and hit a dead trigger. Was a shell stove-piped in the breech, and by the time I cleared it, a shot would have been futile.

At least Marsh, God bless him, didn't break. Which turned out to be the highlight of our morning.

Didn't see anything but a steady stream of ducks headed south from the rice to the marsh until just before 7, when what would eventually be a couple hundred specks poured into an unhunted piece to my SW (and upwind). Saw two more little flights get up across Dolza well east of Jarren and Johnny's and head due south, and that was it. Nary another speck crossed the farm I was on before an especially nasty looking rain cell sent us to the truck.

Where I took a moment to rip off three shots slick as snot and determine the earlier hang-up was operator error, plain and simple. Grrr...

Went out past the dry piece and saw the truck belonged to a crew, also packing up gooseless, across the road and far away from where "my" geese had been feeding for the past week - but weren't today. So I'd probably missed little or nothing there, too. Don't know whether the geese have taken advantage of the strong southerly tailwinds, but there are certainly enough ducks still around to keep me hopeful they haven't.

[Rick]

Miss 'em already. Just made a Wally World run and grabbed a call for company in the truck before leaving the house...

[Rick]

Thanks, I'd not tried again. Did see a used one offered in another board's classifieds a while back, but the seller didn't like my "negative attitude" for requesting a photo of what he described as "scuff marks" and decided not to sell to me. Might have been a good thing, if they were bad enough to prevent my own eventual resale of a call that wasn't a keeper.

It's my understanding, though, that most used calls are now sold and traded through Face Book pages dedicated to that, if you know your way around FB. I don't.

[Rick]

Been my experience that they only booger the reed at most, and I'm going to tune a new one to best suit me, anyway. But I guess you never know about the next one...

[Rick]

I lost several years logs on Word that wasn't backed up to a hard drive crash this year and have been transcribing old ones still archived here (Thank you ever so much, Olly.) to a perhaps more Rick-proof "cloud" version, and came across a couple of season's end entries from 2015 that were surprisingly (or perhaps "depressingly") current:

Lagniappe: A wise man, OK, it was just John Elher, once suggested that my log wouldn't be complete without a "lagniappe" (something extra) section, and I wish I'd started one earlier as an opportunity to add little essays about this or that topic which had struck me as being of special interest that hunt. Perhaps doing so now will serve as reminder to make a regular thing of it next season.

What has me mulling just now is having given up on specks before their season closes this coming Sunday. Has always been not just my practice but my compulsion to be out there giving it a good, if not necessarily my best, shot right to the bitter end. But I would have been quite content to call it a season after yesterday morning if not for a reawakening of the urge to go by this morning's chill wind after days on end of Spring-like weather. And having honored that urge, I'm ready to put the gun up until next September.

Could blame Doug for cutting the camp's ag land leases to next to nothing and mostly sorry at that, making the hunting tougher than tough. But if I'd been willing to work harder, or even just stay longer, I've little doubt I could still be killing specks. But I haven't been. Perhaps I've just grown old and lazy...

That was my season's swan song and could well have been this one's, too.

To which Dcomeaux called "BS":

He's not done! He has two days left and the urge will be strong.

He was right. I made a last morning hunt. Couldn't stand not to.

And while I'd not mentioned it here, I did the same again this year, with the near carbon copy result of being in one place watching birds fall into another - and lacking the gumption to stick it out more than a couple hours to see if they'd move again.

Some of my betters that morning in their after hunt hero shot:


Then, too, there was this response to another of Dave's posts:

I share your Jones. Hedge calls are soaking up butcher block conditioner as I type this, and I've hatched a new plan for marsh specks that includes redoing a mess of FBs, on which I plan to begin testing Bulldog Adhesion Promoter against Rustoleum's plastic primer as soon as the day warms enough.

Two seasons have come and gone since I wrote that, and hedge calls are, once again, soaking up Howard's Butcher Block Conditioner as I type. That, and I'm still planning to repaint those speck decoys.

[Ericdc]

Rick, thought about you yesterday. Brought Amos with me to cruise a tract of timber and he was jumping timber doodles all over the woods with me.


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[Rick]

There'd be a joke in there about not just jumping them, if the litter on the ground beside him didn't look more like dove feathers than woodcock.

[Ericdc]

There'd be a joke in there about not just jumping them, if the litter on the ground beside him didn't look more like dove feathers than woodcock.

Ha, yea no attempt to catch them. Really think he just enjoyed sneaking up to them and watching them fly off.


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[DComeaux]

To which Dcomeaux called "BS":

He's not done! He has two days left and the urge will be strong.

He was right. I made a last morning hunt. Couldn't stand not to.

And while I'd not mentioned it here, I did the same again this year, with the near carbon copy result of being in one place watching birds fall into another - and lacking the gumption to stick it out more than a couple hours to see if they'd move again.

Then, too, there was this response to another of Dave's posts:

I share your Jones. Hedge calls are soaking up butcher block conditioner as I type this, and I've hatched a new plan for marsh specks that includes redoing a mess of FBs, on which I plan to begin testing Bulldog Adhesion Promoter against Rustoleum's plastic primer as soon as the day warms enough.

I can get frustrated on some hunts and swear I'm done, but just hours later, sitting in my recliner, the urge comes back. The thought of what might be tomorrow is overwhelming. It's hard on me to miss a day within the season when I'm free to hunt. The weather and high wind days that kept me from the blind this year made me sick.

[Ducaholic]

Same here D. One day not hunting and I'm itching to go again and that's when conditions are less than ideal.Once it gets in the blood it's damn near impossibvle to cure. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[Bud]

Hunted with a man that brought his retired retriever, to which I was asked first and fine with, just to get the old dog out there again. When we shot ducks, the old boy would stand, shake, and moan/whine while admitting he just couldn't do it any longer.
I don't think blood can lose something we hold so dear.

I felt pity at first, but realized he loved it as much as I.

[Rick]

JohnC was passing the house this morning and caught me in the drive getting ready to head afield to run the dogs, and either talking calls with him for a bit or the lingering fog inspired me grab a speck call, too. Turns out they're whole lot easier to work when folks aren't shooting at them.

[Rick]

Past time to start chipping away at this season's wrap-up:

Date: I did a better September teal season "wrap-up" at its end than I possibly could by memory now, so the following is of the regular duck and specklebelly seasons. Of which the first split seemed relatively weak and the second relatively strong – on the whole. As always, both had their ups and downs, often without reason I could discern.

Time: Very early on this season, I decided I'd had enough of trying to make the pee-poor ag land blinds Doug kept for us effective enough to host afternoon parties in them only to see the spot either trashed by the next morning "guide" sent there – or then sublet out, too. So I quit taking afternoon paying parties altogether and did what little personal afternoon hunting I did in places so screwed up no one else would hunt them – and without fixing them up enough to change that.

Location: This was my eleventh season at "the mudhole". Which even in this late summer's "historic" flooding remained inches of water over feet of sludge:


But at least opening the pond for business was mostly a matter of grinding lillies, rather than surface black dirt:






Well, there was the small matter of the blind having straightened its turnbuckles and rolled on its side during the highest water:


No pics of the wrestling match that precipitated, as a fellow guide who suffered the same reward for having covered his blind for the off season and I were too busy being reminded we were no longer the men we once thought we were. But I did get one of our righted trophy held down by ballast water while awaiting new shackles:


And, of course, a hero shot of the finished ordeal:


Oh, yes, and a couple shots of the finished product, albeit prior to the second split:



TO BE CONTINUED...

[Rick]

Cloud Cover: While there was an extended period of daily fog, or two, that had me craving sun - or anything other than white, we had a good mix of cloud cover conditions. A casual study of which revealed none to necessarily be a game maker or breaker. Not even that blankety-blank fog. But nothing shook my faith in the notion that clear skies help hide us from suspicious eyes by creating shadows and glare:


Wind Direction and Velocity: That same photo could also illustrate my preference for northeast winds. Though I can't say we found them "reliable" carriers of fresh waterfowl, they often enough were:


That, and the Mudhole blind's positioning and setup helps hide its hunters particularly well from birds finishing into a NE wind and then traps them against it, front and center, when they try to land in the pond's lee and the guns come up. (Assuming the fellows with those guns can hold their water as birds swing by close.)

But the log shows that we often did surprisingly well on calm mornings, and that while I might expect big ducks on northerly winds and teal on southerly, the reverse was often enough the case to rule out rules.

Temperature: I've long since lost faith in the waterfowlers' great hope that cold fronts carry strong shows of new birds and known that they may - or may not. With the smart money on the later in our part of the country. But this year it did seem most fronts were beneficial, and we enjoyed a few impressive shows of mallards with them. (As well as a few mornings of ice in the shallows.) Maybe not "like the old days" but close enough to be encouraging spikes in the long term chart showing our mallard hunting's decline.

Alas, we also endured enough long warm periods to see me buying more long-sleeved t-shirts, so I could still hide my face behind a camouflaged off arm while calling without stewing in something heavier. And we ended the season with dog work in gator mode.

Moon phase: Even with a "super moon" lighting the run to the blind, we enjoyed some strong hunting in the early season, and our full moon "luck" held up right through season's end. (Not that I'd intentionally plan a long distance late season trip for the full of the moon...

Special Notes: This year I took my closest look at the above weather categories by charting the conditions when we had enough game that three guns killed over a dozen birds or two guns more than nine, as well as during our six bird or less hunts. And I found no hard connections between weather and bag-apparent opportunity and just how tenuous general rules can be. We seemed about as likely to be successful or fall short under one set of conditions or another. Pre-front, front, or post front, for instance, could all be boom or bust - but I hope for the presence of mind to use this seldom used "notes" category to track that relationship more closely in the future.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Rick]

Waterfowl Activity: "Green-wing days," when those precious little jewels swept through the marsh in waves, were conspicuously even rarer than usual on our end of the marsh during the first split but made up for it the second, when they may have set a blind record for their kind. And we enjoyed a few stellar-for-recent-times shows of mallards in both splits, while suffering relatively few truly dry spells in either.

But what struck me most, even while posting such, was the number of mornings when my plainly spoiled self didn't feel there was much of anything moving, yet by our 9:30 curfew we'd managed a good hunt. Albeit mostly with parties also drawing "Kudos" entries like, "The guys made a big time of a dead morning, wore masks, hid well and killed our birds in bunches when they gave us the chance." but not always. Sometimes even poor parties managed to come out of poor mornings well ahead of what might have been my guess. And having admitted being spoiled by our own opportunities, I'll also wonder aloud over how my perception of them is influenced by all the banging and clanging of blinds better situated for little ducks, while we so often sit looking at empty skies that no doubt seem all the more so due to pressure to produce.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: I strive to maintain the attitude that, if a bird can hear me, it can be tolled - I just may not have struck on a way to yet. And nothing happened to dampen that attitude this season. Indeed, it was bolstered by new-to-me successes.

Chief among them was this: "Teal showed me where I may well have been screwing up during my time at the Mudhole. Long ago got it into my head that even if I could get the high little duck flights to break for us, they would invariably power dive by, get over the more attractive chain of big ponds beyond us and follow them to the east. So I've almost always let the serious high flights like today's pass unhailed. But needing 24 ducks of some sort with a crew that wouldn't all hide well, I was desperate enough to look the fool and hit the high teal with ringing hails until a string would bunch, then hammered them some more with a high, squacky teal version of the every-hen-on-the-pond "come-back" I use to break down super high big ducks. And the results were nothing short of remarkable to me, as many flights would not only break and power dive down but could be brought back off the more favorable water by continuing to raise holy cane. Feel like an ass for being too cool to act the fool and, perhaps, kill a whooooole lot more ducks over the years. Might, of course, have been an anomaly, but we weren't just out an hour and change sooner than the other blinds but the only one to fill."

Which not only turned out to be no anomaly but shouldn't have come as such a surprise given this from my September teal summary: "Low bird numbers over the marsh forced a change of attitude toward the high teal flights I've generally written off as unstoppable in the past - or, even more frustrating, most apt to slide off following the more open water behind my isolated pothole to more favorable marsh if they did decide to break for my gadgets or calling. I became desperate enough to hail and holler like heck at the "too high" birds and found keeping on them loud and long enough didn't just break many down but swung them around and back towards the little Mudhole."

All I can say is "Don't get old." Or stuck in a crippling rut, even if you're afraid you might look silly trying to climb out.

A couple more tough day tactics put to good use this season (and that I'd rather not have to rediscover again) were off species and raucous feed calling for stubborn "locals". Chief among my tools for tripping Mudhole locals have been waiting until their rounds have them turned our way and catching them up in the steady beat of an unwavering single quack series or doing absolutely nothing until their natural course has them skirting the guns and then hitting them with a hard greeting to garner a reflex response that brings them in range. Both work well - until they've already bought that particular t-shirt. This year we added fighting-over-feed rackets, every-teal-on-the-pond peeping and even steady beats of diver burrs (for both they and big ducks) to the kit with good result. The first two of which were my old rice field tricks for locals wanting to put in over yonder and the last accidentally learned by initially thinking a little pod distant mottleds that got up and came low in our general direction were ringnecks and being silly enough to stick with the burrs when it became clear they weren't. We're still not close to tolling all of those frustrated pond hoppers, just closer.

The other most noticeable flies in my toll-'em-all ointment have been the really high big duck flights that acknowledge hearing a call but can't be broken or reeled more than a little way in even without outside interference. Tried gaining more leverage on them with a louder Mondo cutdown call for three seasons without managing to, and wanted to try the loudest available J-frame to that end this year, but was unable to contact its maker, Alan Stanley, before the season. Rereading all of this season's failed efforts inspired the search for a used one, which was successful. So next year ears are gonna bleed.

TO BE CONTINUED...