Post Season

[DComeaux]

We had that same spike in LA too.

Wasn't too long ago someone was blaming spinners, which appeared around that time, for the loss of our mallards after that spike.

The only thing spinners do is kill all of the juveniles.

[Ducaholic]

I think what’s changed since 2000 is who is doing the killing. The best most rested habitat kills today were as 20 years ago it was probably spread more evenly. After 20+ years of specialized habitat expansion the average Joe is slowly but surely being put out of the game even in a good year when numbers are above LTA. And all know those years are fewer and further in between in La.

It will never be the same again under AHM.

[SpinnerMan]

We had that same spike in LA too.

Wasn't too long ago someone was blaming spinners, which appeared around that time, for the loss of our mallards after that spike.

The only thing spinners do is kill all of the juveniles.

I wish I killed all the juveniles. I'm lucky when I kill one juvenile.

Over dry fields they seem to be much more attractive than they are over water for mallards.

A few spinners and goose decoys kills ducks.

Spinners over water, some days it helps and some it doesn't. And it definitely seems to be more effective early season when you are probably attracting more juveniles. However, end of the season in dry fields with bigger flocks, it's not just the juveniles. It seems to look like ducks feeding in the field.

This is a good video. Look at all the white flashing of the mallards on or near the ground. They look like spinners. I think there is a big difference over water versus over dry fields after the birds have been educated. I'm trying to figure out how to add a bunch of spinners to my field spread without paying for a bunch of spinners. I would live to look just like this video.

[Rick]

All of my Northern dry field mallard hunting was pre-spinner, and if your setup wasn't dead on the freshest poop in the field, you were dead in the water and doomed to watch ducks funneling down just right over there. Might toll a few early arrivals, but the bunches knew exactly where they were going. Incredibly frustrating stuff when you missed their spot.

Re: the video, it's plain to see that pea farming should be banned.

[SpinnerMan]

The same guys kill the most ducks. We hunt from fixed blinds, so we all setup the same places, so they aren't just getting lucky. Motion seems to be the biggest difference. My best day we had the most spinners and flock a flicker things along with shells on motion stakes. We looked more like the guys that kill the most and ducks acted like we existed for a change. Ducks are active active active and looking like that seems to me to be essential to attracting ducks that weren't come there anyways.

[Ericdc]

I would fully support a nationwide spinner ban, I doubt it’ll happen because the population isn’t being hurt by them, But I believe it would help us and possibly re distribute the harvest to more like it was pre spinner.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

I swore off electronics in waterfowling back in the '70s or early '80s. Hunted several wood duck holes the wind could seldom reach and supplemented my still-life decoy spreads in them with a pair of duck butts with battery operated eccentric weights that made them wobble. Also made them "whir, whir, whir, whir..." And there finally came a slow backwater afternoon when that incessant damn "whirring" got the best of me, and I shot them both and took the oath against electronics in the field.

Now, I find myself running both a MacGyver-rigged spinner and a modified Mallard Machine splasher - and have a second such spinner waiting to be deployed this coming season.

I still agree with those thinking the line should have been drawn at anything electronic, mind you, but that genie's not going back in the bottle.

[aunt betty]

It was a whole lot more fun without all the expensive gadgetry.
Every time I hear or read the phrase "the hunting industry" it makes me cringe a little.

Like we're supposed to be proud of spending all that loot on a dumb ass plastic duck toy thing. Remote control too. Wheeee.
There. I said it.

[Rick]

How so, DE? Hear it a lot, but never with any real evidence.

[Ericdc]

If anything, the hunting rights lobby is stronger due to the size of the industry now.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

The stronger a resource's economic value, the stronger the support it engenders. Without, it quits being a resource and becomes welfare dependent.

[aunt betty]

We've hit rock bottom guys. Talking about the politics of "why the hell I ain't eating duck jerky right now".

This fall is going to be epic. We're due for an actual winter.

[aunt betty]

Let me take the time to bitch about my phone. lol

This morning was nice so I got on my bibs and went and got into bee hives. About 16 of them.
Got in the truck, turned the AC on full blast and went ahhhh. Then I noticed that, "gee my pocket is warm like I have a hot hands hand warmer in there". Got it out and somehow it had opened itself and was upgrading everything. On 247/300 and something.
Holy shit.

So it finally quit and now it's jingling trying to tell me that there is new software available.
Makes one want to cuss because it never says what it's doing. Probably upgrading the spyware so AGFC can catch me quicker next time.

[aunt betty]

We've hit rock bottom guys. Talking about the politics of "why the hell I ain't eating duck jerky right now".

This fall is going to be epic. We're due for an actual winter.

We’re a little early this year. It’s only May.

In a few days or a couple weeks the first hurricane warning is going to come along and we'll forget all about corn and spinners.

[Rick]

DE, I'm who pointed out the unprotected sex will be the death of waterfowling, not corn or commerce. And it will be. Waterfowl's habitat is being gobbled up by both housing new humans and catering to their needs and wants. And will continue to do so - unless the waterfowl become more profitable than the alternatives. Such as is the case with land that isn't crawfished because its owners have the will and way to preserve the hunting or rice land habitat that only remains more profitable than sugar cane thanks to the hunting revenues that would be lost with cane.

Anyway, what evidence, beyond supposition, do you have that being easier due to commercialization has hurt waterfowl, or turkey, populations?

(Took hundreds of turkey pics with the help of "Agnes," an inch-wide decoy, but never shot one over any decoy and even called mine, and for several other folks, by voice alone for the last few years I hunted them. But I helped teach a mess of people to enjoy hunting turkeys through my articles and seminars and dang sure don't feel a lick of regret over it.)

[aunt betty]

The "greatest hunter of all time" needed two trains. The second one was for picking up all the dead stuff he shot from the first one. Classy. Probably stocked the finest cigars and hoes.

[DComeaux]

[Rick]

Read an interesting line in an article the other day. To paraphrase:

“Yesterday’s hunter used his gear to hunt. Today’s hunter hunts so that he can use his gear.”

Found that to be very telling of where the hunting industry has brought us.

Though hardly universal, I'd think there's always been some truth to that. May well have shifted more from DIY to purchasing, but waterfowlers, as a group, have always been gadgeteers. Human nature, I suppose, considering how many clubs some of my golfing friends burn through trying to up their game. That's what grew the industries. On one channel, QVC showing it's modern addicts the latest and greatest things they can't resist, but on another there's also American Picker showing us acres and acres of junk old timers spent their lives accumulating.

Now retired USFWS biologist, Fred Rector(sp?), had a different slant on waterfowing gear that's stuck with me since he shared it back in the mid '80s. Fred felt that the focus on gear rose as gunning opportunities decreased and used the East Coast regions that are now pale shadows of their waterfowling past as example. He'd seen a great deal more waterfowling passion channeled into the decoys, boats and other accoutrements of the sport there than here on the still strong wintering grounds. To his mind it wasn't so much that just the right gear was necessary to succeed, as he said something along the lines of "Cajun Joe would go out with some brush and beat up Flambeaus in an old bateau (flat-bottomed boat) and limit on East Coast black ducks just about as easily." It was about the need to spend pent up waterfowling energy on something. To have outlets for waterfowling passion.

(Speaking of which, I just realized there are eight, count 'em:8, calls here on my desk. Not to mention that we're having this discussion in May.)

[Rick]

Neat! I’ve wondered how Rick differentiates in his log.

Hen and four drakes:

IMG_4110a.jpg

A ratio suggesting it's early in their migration and hens are still waiting for their broods to be ready for the trip.

[aunt betty]

Not to mention that we're having this discussion in May.)

I can start posting videos of me getting stung by bees if you think it'd help get thru the non duck season.
It's bee season and...

[DComeaux]

[Rick]

Once upon a time, nearly all the snow geese wintered in the deep marsh on the Texas coast and nearly all the blues in our Louisiana deep marsh. When I moved here in '83 both had discovered and made the shift to ag lands where they were starting to mix, some more literally than others when choosing mates began in February(?).

At that time, we'd still see six or eight "blues" for every "snow," and everyone still generally referred to them all as "blues". (Except some, mostly old, guys who still called the light geese "brant," which I've not heard in the past couple decades.) White-bellied blues were then still very rare, and I can remember priding myself on pulling off the then-slick trick of managing to shoot the, then, five bird light goose limit of all white-bellied blues.

Don't recall the year, but we even had two Canadian biologist camp in our guide shack for a week collecting light goose hearts of all color phases for DNA samples to sort out their differences. Do recall a carver friend with permits to keep the species saying that he didn't know what it cost to ship those biologists down here, but he could have solved their white-belly mystery and saved them the freight, if they'd dropped a dime on a phone call.

[Deltaman]

Haven't had enough of them show up here to hunt on a regular basis, nor have I shot enough of them to know, but was always told that blue geese were just a color phase of snow geese. Based on your statement above that the snows wintering in TX and blues wintering in LA, makes me think that maybe that's not true. Are they not related?