Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

[Rick]

The closest I've heard any call come to the quality I'm speaking of was in a Lares speck sound file I can no longer locate.

[Rick]

Redbone will do it all day long. It’s the caller

Would love to hear it.

[Rick]

Do you not hear the almost melodic ring, for lack of a better word, in the speck's leet that isn't in yours? Yours is more of a mechanical squeak. At least to my ear. Which is not to suggest your not an accomplished caller and what you're doing isn't effective. Thanks for giving it a shot.


(LSU gals are getting killed. Thank goodness for double elimination.)

[Rick]

Didn't say it doesn't sound close, just that the notes lack the same musical (again for lack of a better word) ring. Sort of a tapping on crystal effect heard in the bird's "leet" and a lot of their clucking notes.

It was, in fact, my understanding at the time, from Brad at their shop, that Ken White helped design and was running the Lares on the file I thought came closest to capturing the quality I'm speaking of. I bought one, along with a couple of $25 gut sets to mess with, and never could duplicate his work. (Did, however, find the call remarkably easy to run and have incorporated the use of his/their notch at the front of the toneboard trough when working down raw Riceland toneboads to best suit me.)

Anyway, if you're using it to break specks out of blue flights, you've taken the leet to heights (Get it?) I've not even imagined, much less tried. Never been more than a finishing tool for me.

[Rick]

My bad, was probably Brett. Know it wasn't Joe Lares, and that was my only dealing with that shop. I found the Lares useful on foggy mornings or on calm ones in places where the sound was banging off close tree lines or high protection levees, but haven't run it in quite a while. (Last place I wished I had it and didn't was between the big levees on DComeaux's old ag land hole one still morning.)

[DComeaux]

My bad, was probably Brett. Know it wasn't Joe Lares, and that was my only dealing with that shop. I found the Lares useful on foggy mornings or on calm ones in places where the sound was banging off close tree lines or high protection levees, but haven't run it in quite a while. (Last place I wished I had it and didn't was between the big levees on DComeaux's old ag land hole one still morning.)

I felt silly trying to call in that bowl on calm days.

[Rick]

I felt silly trying to call in that bowl on calm days.

Last I heard, it might be available again this year...

[Rick]

And something to start the day off:

[DComeaux]

I felt silly trying to call in that bowl on calm days.

Last I heard, it might be available again this year...

Very interesting. Have you seen it's condition lately?

[Rick]

PMed you.

[Rick]

Can't say I'm all that keen on putting them out as we go in: too many times they haven't come back. If I have to hunt where they're over-nighting and know it, I like our chances of their returning during our morning hunt better if I go ease them out under the cover of darkness before calling it a night, myself, the evening before. Then, if we do our part, we can clip our birds from the early morning arrivals and get out before the later ones are any the wiser. Not a whole lot I've enjoyed more than pretty much literally walking among them in the dark. Miss that.

Have also found some craft in hunting near bodies of birds that don't know we're around before the first shot's fired. Unless you're down wind/flight from the body, it's tougher to get new-to-the-area birds to give you a look, and their momentum's generally going to be toward the body. So when they do turn your way, it's too often from a direction that would require shooting in the body's direction and perhaps running it off. At least in my experience, when we've not been down wind/flight of a body, most of our shooting has been on birds leaving the body (and perhaps sick of the crowd), which are much more likely to finish for us. And if everything coming out of the body is headed the other way, we're likely doomed to a frustrating hunt.

Sometimes fire control means everything. A volley, even directed away from a body may blow it out, where beginning with single shots away from it will only stir the body and lull it into becoming comfortable with your gunfire. In the "way back when..." we had a lot of land, we'd often begin afternoon hunts way downwind of bodies, with me firing single shots to see how the body took them and gradually work our way into closer proximity to it before setting up. Called it "reconnaissance by fire". Hunters new to the ploy looked at me funny, but it could put us in the catbird seat - at least as long as no one then lost their water and blazed away at something in the body's direction.

[Darren]

Not a whole lot I've enjoyed more than pretty much literally walking among them in the dark. Miss that.

Sounds awfully neat!

[Ericdc]

I always like when we have specks roosting at the neighbors but not on ours. Nobody hunts the farm to our west.


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[Darren]

Last night I had a strong speck flight as a guest somewhere at a hot field, but I was doing my part to not get invited back. Was dropping shells in the blind making noise, couldn't get gun loaded right, etc.

And then I woke up

[Rick]

...but I was doing my part to not get invited back. Was dropping shells in the blind making noise, couldn't get gun loaded right, etc...

Drives me nuts when I have specks coming and guys start shucking "duck" loads, tearing through their stuff for "goose" loads and actions are clanging closed while I'm trying to put them where a spit wad's plenty. Grrr...

[Darren]

...but I was doing my part to not get invited back. Was dropping shells in the blind making noise, couldn't get gun loaded right, etc...

Drives me nuts when I have specks coming and guys start shucking "duck" loads, tearing through their stuff for "goose" loads and actions are clanging closed while I'm trying to put them where a spit wad's plenty. Grrr...

Oh yea that was me, still fumbling with the shells when the birds had worked in right there

Funny how dreams (or nightmares??) go

[Rick]

Better to dream you thought you could leap from tall buildings and found out you shouldn't than to mess up a sweet speck op.

[SpinnerMan]

...but I was doing my part to not get invited back. Was dropping shells in the blind making noise, couldn't get gun loaded right, etc...

Drives me nuts when I have specks coming and guys start shucking "duck" loads, tearing through their stuff for "goose" loads and actions are clanging closed while I'm trying to put them where a spit wad's plenty. Grrr...

It's too late once they are working to swap. I swap loads a lot, but only based on expectations and not what is in the air. I've taken little ducks with big goose loads and big geese with duck loads. Just got let them get a little closer.

I actually forgot I had thrown in my wood duck buzzing our asses loads when some geese came over head. As soon as I squeezed the trigger, They were a little far for what I had. The one I shot at came down. I assumed it wasn't me and my buddy took it. Next day he complained about all the pellets that hit it I guess I put it center pattern