Post Season

[Rick]

Yep, ought to outlaw hunting over any food source made available to waterfowl by artificial means. Won't change the migration trends, but more birds for you and me, Dave!

[aunt betty]

It's been pretty good for a long time and this fall, according to our E.V. wildlife biologists, is going to be the best in 50 years according to the 10-yr model.
It's going to be epic. Things are looking up and we're optimistic.
There's no crying in basebaw...errrr waterfowl hunting.

Buy your license and stamps today.

[DComeaux]

Interesting read for the open minded.

And I'm all for this.

Where we go from here
The importance of migration to waterfowl hunters, the consequent
economic effects on the outdoor industry and tourism
and the implications for waterfowl management make a compelling
argument for allocating dollars to migration research.
For example, the ideal data set to evaluate shifts in the timing
of migration would be systematic waterfowl counts along entire
flyways conducted over an extended period of time, just
as waterfowl managers have conducted surveys for breeding
waterfowl for decades. A joint effort among the states in each
flyway and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could produce
definitive answers.

http://www.onwisconsinoutdoors.com/Content/files/Waterfowl/120529-MigrationStudy.pdf

[Ericdc]

Yep, ought to outlaw hunting over any food source made available to waterfowl by artificial means. Won't change the migration trends, but more birds for you and me, Dave!

If the goal is to return the migration to where it “historically” was, wouldn’t that make a bigger impact than just outlawing the flooded corn?

Singles are nice, but might as well swing for the fences.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

Wish they'd covered the potential gain from knowing if the migration is, in fact, later.

[Rick]

Yep, ought to outlaw hunting over any food source made available to waterfowl by artificial means. Won't change the migration trends, but more birds for you and me, Dave!

If the goal is to return the migration to where it “historically” was, wouldn’t that make a bigger impact than just outlawing the flooded corn?

Singles are nice, but might as well swing for the fences.

You can bet there are a blue butt-load of natural habitat hunters who'd lobby for it if they could see revamping the baiting laws as a real possibility. At least until some other clever soul pointed out whatever act of man contributed to their own water and got them shut down, too...

[DComeaux]

Yep, ought to outlaw hunting over any food source made available to waterfowl by artificial means. Won't change the migration trends, but more birds for you and me, Dave!

Just some birds,Rick, just a few birds. As I've mentioned in many of these discussions on several forums, we we're fairly content with our season this past year, and will probably be again this year, good Lord willing. I just don't want to lose what we have. Something is affecting the migration and no one has answers. Those with plenty to play with, and don't want an interruption, couldn't care less, and will fight to keep what they have at others expense. Some of the comments from the younger crowd were down right disheartening, not pointed at me, but in general. I could really give two shits what they think about me.

If this change is happening naturally, without intervention from man, I can accept that. Until I feel certain that baiting on a large scale is not the issue, then I will hold to this theory.

[DComeaux]

Yep, ought to outlaw hunting over any food source made available to waterfowl by artificial means. Won't change the migration trends, but more birds for you and me, Dave!

If the goal is to return the migration to where it “historically” was, wouldn’t that make a bigger impact than just outlawing the flooded corn?

Singles are nice, but might as well swing for the fences.

You can bet there are a blue butt-load of natural habitat hunters who'd lobby for it if they could see revamping the baiting laws as a real possibility. At least until some other clever soul pointed out whatever act of man contributed to their own water and got them shut down, too...

[Rick]

Yep, that's what you've been doing all along. Great illustration!

[Rick]

If this change is happening naturally, without intervention from man, I can accept that. Until I feel certain that baiting on a large scale is not the issue, then I will hold to this theory.

Did you notice the later harvest in the Northeastern states? Ever hear of large scale, or any, flooded corn north of those states?

And was it flooded corn that brought specks to Louisiana about the time we were losing our big Canadas? Or is now loading Arkansas with specks that we came to think of as "ours"?

[aunt betty]

Perhaps an old beekeeper saying might help. "When my bees swarm and go over and land in your tree they become yours if you want them". That's just how it is. They aren't named. They don't have license tags. They don't carry Id's because they don't have big enough pockets to keep them in.

Same goes for birds.
They're my ducks once they are dangling off my strap. Til then....

[SpinnerMan]

Sometime take a little gander at some of the public hunting areas south of I-70.
Carlisle, Rend Lake, Crab Orchard Lake, Horseshoe Lake, etc. They all have huge areas of corn especially the Carlisle walk-ins.
That place can hold a **** ton of ducks and it does.

Take away the lakes and open water. No ducks. Take away the flooded corn. Still lots of ducks because of the millions of acres of corn in the area. I hunted snows at Carlisle this spring. We actually rented a lodge that is one of this big high-end hunt clubs. The massive water pumps were sitting right next to our rooms.

All it does is help concentrate the ducks. I don't like that.

The "solution" is not to make it more expensive to legally bait. If there is one, it is to make it less expensive.

Look at the deer hunting example. If only one person in the area baited, it would be a huge advantage. However, since it is affordable for almost every hunter to bait, bait is far less effective.

But look at the cost of baiting waterfowl. It is cost prohibitive for the average group of guys or small club. This gives a huge advantage to the big clubs and the rich guys.

If every field that was hunted was baited, it would make baiting far less effective.

All the bait in the world won't hold ducks after they lose all their open water or snow gets too deep to make baiting impractical.

And for baiting to be effective for a season, you can't be banging on them every day of the season. They ain't that stupid. Look at how Rick's place runs their operations. They quit hunting by 9:30 every day. You need a ton of land and you can't hunt it hard and it is very expensive. If all the neighbors are running smaller bait operations, the ducks will be scattered and the bait far less effective.

To change the migration, you have to take away the water, which isn't going to happen. You also need to kill the short stopping birds much more than we do and the long migrating birds much less than we do. That too is not going to happen either. This is a "problem" generations in the making and will take generations to undo.

Spinner, even if I wanted to plant (bait), planting in a natural, uncontrolled, brackish marsh is not an option, for me or the majority of those that hunt it. Being able to bait is not the issue.
The cheapest way is a few sacks of deer corn in the pond. Those are sold on every street corner down here during the deer season. I wouldn't want everyone doing this, though. We'd wipe out the population in short order. You think commercial harvest put a hurting on em, try letting everyone bait for a few seasons and see what happens. Limits for everyone.

I hear-tell that the feds are banking on not everyone getting their limits in their management plan of the population, thus the liberal seasons and bag limits. I guess they figure that those with the funds necessary to plant for ducks aren't enough to hurt the population, but this number is increasing, rapidly. Tie that in with the refuges doing this, non hunted, and there we have the ingredients for migration alteration.

Water without the unnatural, over abundance of food is not a duck magnet. They can only sit on an open bathtub of water for so long without having to find food.

How would you wipe out the population? First the birds are short stopping, so you can't kill what ain't there. This is your fundamental complaint.

Second, even if they are there, there are limits. And baiting os just not that effective. It takes time to train the birds there is food and safety. Most won't limit themselves once the birds do show.

I doubt it would be limits for everyone, but so what, reduced bag limits for mallards, one or zero hen, why not be picky if it is so easy? Maybe shorter seasons.

But right now there are no ducks to find your bait, isn't that the problem. They are short stopping.

[DComeaux]

Sometime take a little gander at some of the public hunting areas south of I-70.
Carlisle, Rend Lake, Crab Orchard Lake, Horseshoe Lake, etc. They all have huge areas of corn especially the Carlisle walk-ins.
That place can hold a **** ton of ducks and it does.

Take away the lakes and open water. No ducks. Take away the flooded corn. Still lots of ducks because of the millions of acres of corn in the area. I hunted snows at Carlisle this spring. We actually rented a lodge that is one of this big high-end hunt clubs. The massive water pumps were sitting right next to our rooms.

All it does is help concentrate the ducks. I don't like that.

The "solution" is not to make it more expensive to legally bait. If there is one, it is to make it less expensive.

Look at the deer hunting example. If only one person in the area baited, it would be a huge advantage. However, since it is affordable for almost every hunter to bait, bait is far less effective.

But look at the cost of baiting waterfowl. It is cost prohibitive for the average group of guys or small club. This gives a huge advantage to the big clubs and the rich guys.

If every field that was hunted was baited, it would make baiting far less effective.

All the bait in the world won't hold ducks after they lose all their open water or snow gets too deep to make baiting impractical.

And for baiting to be effective for a season, you can't be banging on them every day of the season. They ain't that stupid. Look at how Rick's place runs their operations. They quit hunting by 9:30 every day. You need a ton of land and you can't hunt it hard and it is very expensive. If all the neighbors are running smaller bait operations, the ducks will be scattered and the bait far less effective.

To change the migration, you have to take away the water, which isn't going to happen. You also need to kill the short stopping birds much more than we do and the long migrating birds much less than we do. That too is not going to happen either. This is a "problem" generations in the making and will take generations to undo.

Spinner, even if I wanted to plant (bait), planting in a natural, uncontrolled, brackish marsh is not an option, for me or the majority of those that hunt it. Being able to bait is not the issue.
The cheapest way is a few sacks of deer corn in the pond. Those are sold on every street corner down here during the deer season. I wouldn't want everyone doing this, though. We'd wipe out the population in short order. You think commercial harvest put a hurting on em, try letting everyone bait for a few seasons and see what happens. Limits for everyone.

I hear-tell that the feds are banking on not everyone getting their limits in their management plan of the population, thus the liberal seasons and bag limits. I guess they figure that those with the funds necessary to plant for ducks aren't enough to hurt the population, but this number is increasing, rapidly. Tie that in with the refuges doing this, non hunted, and there we have the ingredients for migration alteration.

Water without the unnatural, over abundance of food is not a duck magnet. They can only sit on an open bathtub of water for so long without having to find food.

How would you wipe out the population? First the birds are short stopping, so you can't kill what ain't there. This is your fundamental complaint.

Second, even if they are there, there are limits. And baiting os just not that effective. It takes time to train the birds there is food and safety. Most won't limit themselves once the birds do show.

I doubt it would be limits for everyone, but so what, reduced bag limits for mallards, one or zero hen, why not be picky if it is so easy? Maybe shorter seasons.

But right now there are no ducks to find your bait, isn't that the problem. They are short stopping.

Just do the math. Total number of hunters in the U.S. x the limit per hunt, subtracted from the population. This was mentioned by a waterfowl biologist when asked the difference between flooded corn and broadcasting bait. He threw some numbers out there, but I don't remember exactly what they were, and don't feel like looking em up. But it sure opened my eyes. I had never thought of that, and imagine how many hunters would be added to the list if this (Poor mans baiting) was allowed.

..and you are correct, this is about short stopping with legal baiting. Oh, and we do (did) have enough birds this past season where baiting would've been highly effective. IMOO. I'd think you saw the video I posted. You could stand there naked, in the middle of the pond and easily get your limit. There are plenty of skeet and trap places for those that like to shoot.

[SpinnerMan]

Total number of hunters in the U.S. x the limit per hunt, subtracted from the population.

You killed almost 7 ducks per day out of your blind. If you used bait, how much does that go up?

Some years I don't see 7 ducks killed.

Up here for most of the season all the bait in the world will not help. And your argument is that for much of your season it will not help because there are just no ducks in the area. Your argument is that they stay to the north of you because of bait, but why do they stay so far north of me until so late in the season? Are those damn Canadians baiting them? The birds are staying north of the Cheddar Curtain until well into our season.

It is NOT going to increase the harvest by anywhere close to that amount.

And there is a simple solution, lower bag limits. Like I said, take the mallard numbers down, etc.

However, when duck numbers are high, there are only so many nesting sites, so hunter harvest tends to be less important to next years populations. If less ducks are shot then more ducks are eaten by predators. The big swings in duck population are not because of big swings in hunter success.

But you are wildly over estimating the effectiveness because you can't kill what ain't there. Those flooded corn operations aren't killing limits everyday for the 60 days. They have some incredible hunts.


Here's the math that I think is at work. Let's bust the mallard population into 2 groups. The short stoppers (SS) and the traditional migrators (TM).

Say the population is 1,000 and 100 are SS and 900 are TM.

The SS and TM are equally successful at breeding and at the end of each season everything balances out so that there are 1,000 mallards total.

The SS mallards and TM mallards both start being hunted in Canada in early September, but the SS mallards are only hunted until the end of December. The TM mallards on the other hand are hunted until the end of January. The TM mallards are hunted 15% longer than the SS mallards. 5 months versus 6. Also the further south you go, the more duck hunters there are. North Dakota has 22,000 duck hunters, while Louisiana has 74,000 and Arkansas has 100,000. So in addition to being hunted more days, it is a hell of a lot more hunters. So the odds of a TM bird being harvest is likely 25% if not 50% greater than a SS bird if not even more than that. Now in the past, the SS birds didn't have near the quality food they have today, so they didn't go back north as healthy, but I doubt that's the case any more.

Nesting and other mortality kills more than hunters. Not sure of the numbers, but let's for the sake of math assume that 1/3rd of all birds die from natural causes and 10% of SS birds are killed by hunters and 12.5% of TM are. The productivity is set to keep the total population constant. So what you see is that over 25 years, the total population is unchanged, but the population of SS increases from 100 to 254, while the population of TM decreases from 900 to 746. And I think that is a very conservative difference in hunter mortality. But you can see how in 25 years, you get a big shift in populations based on nothing more than the simple facts that we know. Those facts are ducks that migrate to southern Louisiana are hunted for a month longer than birds that stop far north and there are a hell of a lot more duck hunters in Louisiana than there are in Iowa or Illinois or any of the northern states. More people hunting longer will reduce the population relative to places where less people hunter for shorter periods of time.

Then again, maybe it is baiting and not more people killing more ducks for more time that is the reason.

Just do the math.

Ducks that head as far as you are a lot more likely to get killed than ducks that stop up north. And we have been doing that for decades. Small differences compounded for decades make big shifts. And if the relative mortality of a duck migrating to southern Louisiana is higher like I think (don't know just gut feel based on the number of hunters and days of hunting), the shift would be much more dramatic than the simple figure I presented and more in line with what you all have been describing.

25%Mortality.jpg

[aunt betty]

Wait you're assuming that every duck hunter in north america can put the shells in their gun facing towards the front plus you're assuming that they can shoot and hit a limit of ducks each time they go out to hunt...no matter how fucked up they are from last night.

[DComeaux]

spinner, if you let all of the good ole boys in Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri bait, just to name a few, I assure you that they'll put a substantial dent in the population. Without bait, even the best pay hunting operations don't get limits for their clients on every hunt. Bait will raise the take numbers substantially, for everyone.

[SpinnerMan]

spinner, if you let all of the good ole boys in Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri bait, just to name a few, I assure you that they'll put a substantial dent in the population. Without bait, even the best pay hunting operations don't get limits for their clients on every hunt. Bait will raise the take numbers substantially, for everyone.

That's the point of limits and seasons. If baiting doubles their effectiveness, I doubt that, but then you halve the seasons and limits. You can dial the seasons and limits to keep the same annual harvest.

The argument for it are two-fold.

1. The current baiting laws are too unclear. It's easy to get in serious trouble when you had no idea the area was "baited" because of subjective judgment. Plus legally, your neighbor can screw you by dumping $50 worth of corn on the property line and making your land unhuntable because it is "baited" and there is nothing you can do.

2. You will never stop the big clubs from baiting. They will jump through whatever hoops there are. More complicated laws and more people like you and me get in trouble for "baiting" when we did no such thing.

Make me king. I don't allow dumping corn, but what I do allow is hunting over manipulated crops. You can plant the corn and then go in and mow it down if you want. You don't have to play this game of building dikes and buying pumps and all that is necessary to flood it and hunt it that way. This eliminates completely the issue of crop damage where fields that are a loss for insurance are mowed, which I think is "normal" farming practice when there are abnormal weather conditions.

I don't have any problem ethically with dumping corn any more than I have an ethical problem with flooded corn or food plots or baiting deer or ... However, I respect tradition and don't want big changes, but small corrections. After all this is just entertainment. It's our version of golf. The rules are arbitrary and created to provide the most entertainment to the most people.

As far as the issue I see with you all killing too many of the birds that migrate that far and us not killing enough of the ones that only migrate this far. I truly don't believe it has anything to do with flooded corn. If it does, it is because those birds go back north fatter and healthier and therefore have bigger broods. The snow goose effect and not the changing of migration patterns. Warmer winters has had some effect, it's not all or nothing, but the primary effect is higher mortality of birds that fly furthest south because they are hunted longer by a lot more hunters. To correct this, and I think it is worth doing because I think we could increase the enjoyment for all of us. The answer is equally unrealistic. It is too add 2 or 3 weeks of hunting up north at the end of January. If the ducks are still here, we get to kill them. To compensate for that increased harvest, take the Arkansas and Lousiana and cut there hen mallard limit from 2 to 1 maybe just for those weeks to balance the harvest. We get more ducks in the short run and you get more in the long run.

As long as ducks that short stop are hunted less, and there is no compensating factor like poorer health and smaller broods, the long term trend will be a larger fraction of the population short stopping. It's just the simple math compounded over time. Now is that what is actually happening. I don't know. It's just what it looks like from my perspective. Maybe you are right. I'm not sure the biologists have the data or even model the population in this manner.

[aunt betty]

Spinner...why are the corn-fed mallard ducks in central Illinois so skinny and pathetic compared to the beasts at Carlisle Lake or further south?

According to your logic the ducks up here are super well-fed and protected from me so that guys who pay can shoot them without doing a bunch of hard work and get all sweaty an stuff.

I've actually been in a pit with "them pay guys" before. Treated me like they owned me.
Chicago...land of the jag-offs.

If you hang out with me for twenty years you'll never hear me say that word. Have hunted with a few guys that talk sort of funny and use that word constantly.

[Rick]

Spinner...why are the corn-fed mallard ducks in central Illinois so skinny and pathetic...

I've hunted with old Cajuns who made a habit of feeling mallards' breast bones, and the sharp ones would make them smile and say, "Like a razor." while motioning down their own cheeks with the side of a hand, well...like a razor. Their happiness being occasioned by the belief that we'd been stocked with new birds, thin from migration.

Now find myself sometimes doing the same, because it tickles me to remember them so.

[SpinnerMan]

Spinner...why are the corn-fed mallard ducks in central Illinois so skinny and pathetic compared to the beasts at Carlisle Lake or further south?

Ducks and geese on the move burn more calories than they consume. So they burn off the fat. If they stayed put in central Illinois for a week or two, they would fatten right back up. New birds that have flown a long ways are skinnier than birds that have just been flying from the roost to the field and back for a couple weeks. The birds we see around Braidwood are generally nice healthy birds sleeping in the goose decoys because the season is closed. The birds we shoot in Plainfield are sometimes fat birds and sometimes skinny birds. I'm sure when the birds first arrive at Carlisle, they are skinny, but fatten up pretty quick whether they are eating flooded corn or waste grain corn.

We see the same thing with geese. Some don't have a lick of fat on them and some have so much fat they remind me of the fat raccoons I caught back when I trapped as a kid. Have they come far recently or have they been there awhile lounging around and eating? New birds are a lot easier to kill.

Central Illinois is not the end of the line for very many ducks, but mostly just a transition area where they are passing through as I understand it largely from you. That's my guess. It's consistent with what I see up here with the ducks and geese.

I really think the main thing flooded corn does is concentrate the birds that are there. Instead of the birds scattering over a million acres, they can all pile in to unhunted flooded crops. If it does anything, yes it makes them healthier than they otherwise would be, but I'm skeptical of that now with no till farming. I'm sure it was a big help before that. The birds eating only waste grain corn are not having a hard life. And Carlisle is surround in every direction by corn. It just reduces the dry field hunters success and increases the success of the few hunting where the birds are concentrated. Does that increase the overall harvest? I doubt it, but maybe. Probably down around Carlisle where there are not as many goose hunters hunting dry fields. Goose decoys in dry fields make good duck decoys. Add some spinners on remotes and get some more motion in your decoys, and a few more things that I have yet to put together and you will kill quite a few ducks in the goose field. It's different than hunting over water and I haven't completely figured it out yet, but I've only been doing it for a couple years and it is only a very short window before the season closes that we have huntable numbers of ducks.

Look at the massive number of snow geese that feed in the dry fields around Carlisle. They don't hit the flooded corn. They stuck around awhile this year because it took so long for the snow and ice to the north to go. We saw massive numbers of snows when we were down there. We didn't kill them for shit and that was because they had already been there awhile when we arrived and they were a high fraction of old birds leading the push north. But OMG were there a lot of them flying out to feast on dry corn every day. So yes, the snow goose effect, healthier better fed birds producing more babies is likely a factor. But I think that is the no-till and not flooded corn. Even if it is flooded corn, I don't believe that is why more are short stopping than decades ago. I think it is the 60 day season resulting in Arkansas and Louisiana killing more of the sub-populations that migrate to the deep south while the ones the sub-populations that stay up north are benefiting from both the snow goose effect (waste grain not plowed under - granted I believe it was rice that helped the snow geese more than no till, but it was better forage regardless) and that by the time they arrive most duck hunters are froze out and the goose hunters only have a short window before the season closes so pressure is very low.

http://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-research-science/understanding-waterfowl-fat-is-fit

An average-sized hen mallard will burn approximately 1.8 million calories during a 1,500-mile journey from Saskatchewan to southern Louisiana. That loss of calories equates to burning 194 grams of fat, or roughly 18 percent of her body mass.

Most waterfowl make several stops during migration to replenish burned fat, rest, and carry out other essential activities such as courtship.

They burned off their fat so they stop in Central Illinois. Once they fatten up, adios, and off to preferable winter habitat.

It's like Central PA. The birds prefer to simply over fly the area. No large areas of desirable habitat where they are not harassed by hunters. Back during the 30 day season, we saw large numbers of wintering ducks. But little is off limits to hunting and what is is apparently not that appealing for whatever reason ducks deem it so.

[Ericdc]

If all things are equal and everyone baited, what would change? The pressure would still be what it is down here, and the birds would respond accordingly. The guys that have the food manage pressure.

Rick hunts the mudhole for 60 days straight, I don’t see how baiting would help him one bit unless he started hunting just a few days a week.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SpinnerMan]

If all things are equal and everyone baited, what would change? The pressure would still be what it is down here, and the birds would respond accordingly. The guys that have the food manage pressure.

Rick hunts the mudhole for 60 days straight, I don’t see how baiting would help him one bit unless he started hunting just a few days a week.

But remember he only hunts until 9:30 regardless. They manage the pressure.

[aunt betty]

This baiting controversy sucks. I've never used bait on waterfowl but am thinking about it now since we're actually openly talking about it now SO...which is better Green Giant, Niblets, Frozen Generic, or the stuff in bags?

Corn nuts? I'd eat the bait.

Candy corn is legal.



I'm almost certain that if you baited one field with corn and another with Riceland rice that the ducks would prefer the rice. This mssg brought to you by Riceland Inc.

[aunt betty]

If all things are equal and everyone baited, what would change? The pressure would still be what it is down here, and the birds would respond accordingly. The guys that have the food manage pressure.

Rick hunts the mudhole for 60 days straight, I don’t see how baiting would help him one bit unless he started hunting just a few days a week.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Depends on where I'm located. Big water anything can happen anytime so you tend to "ten more minutes" about twenty times or better. Pack a lunch.
Timber? If it hasn't happened by 9:30 or 10 it's probably not going to. Plan on leaving early. Everyone does.
It gets dark quick and there's always something that needs fixing or maintaining plus town is 13 miles away or more on shitty roads. A flat tire can mess up an entire day ask Hawkeye.
Timber hunting is hell on your gear.

Going to share that story or parts. Flat tires, two. One self-sealed. I was panicking and called Hawk for help.
In the process the tire cable got rolled up without a tire. DON'T DO THAT! It won't come back out and you have to take the whole dang thing apart to make it work again. (If you can)
Hawk was just trying to help. It's all good now but I was hard on him for not listening when I said "let it hang I'll tie it up".
So if you own a truck that has that cable deal never ever ever roll it up without a tire. Tie it up with a wire or string..something.
It's only temporary until you get the tire fixed. Those cable deals are notorious for messing up like that day.

[Rick]

Though in a relatively high traffic area, our marsh sucks wind in terms of holding birds other than ringnecks and some teal, curfew or not. Most birds find quieter corners elsewhere that don't erupt every morning, as ours is generally all but barren of non-resident big ducks, except when new birds arrive, if you visit it later in the day. And those new visitors split when all that inhospitable shooting starts. When we break curfew on each split's last morning, you'd best get back there ASAP while the morning flight's still on, because you may well not pop a cap after noon.

My feeling is that our quarters are just too close to suit them.

1/14 Mon

Waterfowl Activity: Only had one bunch of teal come by - and land. But mallards and pintails flew all morning, mostly high for a good while - then lower after we'd filled with both and were hoping for something else that never showed. So we left early and a couple birds short to let them have our part of the marsh without educating any more.

Birds By Species: 1 gw teal, 12 mallards and 3 pintails

1/15 Tue

Waterfowl Activity: Saw quite a few more teal than the past few days, but mostly very high, as were most big ducks.

Birds By Species: 5 gw teal, 3 mallards, 1pintail, 1 ringneck and 3 shovellers

[Ericdc]

I don’t know anyone that hunts the marsh late into the morning. Just seems like everything is settled in where it wants to be by late morning.

We’ve tried waiting them out before down there with Corey on what we thought was good weather days, but it’s usually a waste of time.

Completely different where I hunt, where once you get into the 2nd split, if the conditions are right, you best pack a lunch.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[aunt betty]

There is an opposite extreme where guys will hunt all day from lst to sunset and do it daily for a week.
I used to fall asleep in the boat-blind. My dog Blackie would wake me up when ducks landed in the decoys.
He had the game completely and totally figured out.

[Rick]

Was looking for something entirely different when I came across this blast from DComeaux's past, his Gueydan camp:

CIMG1860.jpg

[Deltaman]

Was looking for something entirely different when I came across this blast from DComeaux's past, his Gueydan camp:

CIMG1860.jpg

The most important office in the camp