WaterfowlForum.Net

DComeaux wrote:They (specks) are bunched up in R-Kansas and NE La, from what I've been seeing. Maybe this is a good thing? Early pressure won't push em back up like it's been doing. Pressure and weather will push em down later. Let em eat up the fields up there, first.

I’d bet on weather pushing them more than pressure up here, they can loaf all day in dry fields and only get up when they need water.

Lotta food in SE ark and NE La for them. Seems like our goose numbers just get better too as the season progresses.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Whenever I'm in neAR there seems to be a ratio of about 5:1 snows to specks. Maybe 10:1 but it's something like that.
One year the bayou bottoms lease was covered in specks on one side and snows the other Christmas day. Flooded soybeans had something to do with that. Those guys have one heck of a spot.

Dave, the dogs and I took a drive around the greater Klondike area and finally found your snows circling down from way the hey up onto the back of what used to be Shots, LaCroix's and then Crown Oil's before becoming Zealous Oil's piece. Also saw a few specks, but nothing like that area is known to hold.

Shot's! I haven't heard that name in a while. That is/was some awesome real estate.

These bird were way back on its east end where it abuts the school section and I couldn't get a close look or even one that wasn't silhouetted against the sun, but if they weren't blues, they were doing a damn fine imitation. Also heard one flying with some specks while running the dogs, though there, too, the sun was behind them.

Chilly this morning.

Rick wrote:These bird were way back on its east end where it abuts the school section and I couldn't get a close look or even one that wasn't silhouetted against the sun, but if they weren't blues, they were doing a damn fine imitation. Also heard one flying with some specks while running the dogs, though there, too, the sun was behind them.

Chilly this morning.

Yes it is.

Next weekend another cool blast will drop us into the 30's. I looked at temps for last year at this time and we were in the low 80's today climbing to the upper 80's by months end. We started the season last year in the low 80's for a high, only dropping into the low 60' for short periods throughout the 1st split. Average high was mid to upper seventies for the first split, with some days in the low 80's.

Haven't seen a trough in the jet stream for so long that I/we all don't know how to act.
Opening day here should be really good as it was still sucking last week when the youth hunt happened. (usually runs all the locals off)
Expecting to see new birds which means this may be the first opener in decades that was actually worth participating in.
I've skipped a lot of openers because I knew it'd suck.
This saturday...looking forward to it. (so is the dog)
If I get out of bed and its dark he's there watching my every move.

Didn't so much as hear a blue this morning, but it's finally Specklebelly Day in Klondike, along with an appreciable uptick of duck flights in a spot that's been nearly barren of either as of deer the past couple mornings.

Rick wrote:Didn't so much as hear a blue this morning, but it's finally Specklebelly Day in Klondike, along with an appreciable uptick of duck flights in a spot that's been nearly barren of either as of deer the past couple mornings.

Looking good! Think I'm going to be out brushing blinds Saturday if rain makes it through, hoping to see my feather buddies in gray.

Wouldn't want to bet on it, but think grays the predominant big duck I've seen to date.

Had a bar pilot buddy of mine call last night, letting me know that the coots just showed up in numbers in Mobile Bay. He calls me every year when they show, and it is the first sign that some ducks are showing up in the marsh, as they typically arrive about the same time each year. Ya'll get the first sign of the migration by seeing numbers of big ducks and geese, and makes me feel like Charlie Brown.........."all I got was a rock" in the form of coots! Hope to get out in our marsh this weekend to confirm.

Deltaman wrote:Had a bar pilot buddy of mine call last night, letting me know that the coots just showed up in numbers in Mobile Bay. He calls me every year when they show, and it is the first sign that some ducks are showing up in the marsh, as they typically arrive about the same time each year. Ya'll get the first sign of the migration by seeing numbers of big ducks and geese, and makes me feel like Charlie Brown.........."all I got was a rock" in the form of coots! Hope to get out in our marsh this weekend to confirm.

I laughed out load

Deltaman wrote:Had a bar pilot buddy of mine call last night, letting me know that the coots just showed up in numbers in Mobile Bay. He calls me every year when they show, and it is the first sign that some ducks are showing up in the marsh, as they typically arrive about the same time each year. Ya'll get the first sign of the migration by seeing numbers of big ducks and geese, and makes me feel like Charlie Brown.........."all I got was a rock" in the form of coots! Hope to get out in our marsh this weekend to confirm.

Im used to the same thing, though now on private land that doesn't harbor the coots I'm used to seeing. Was always a good migration indicator, I'd figure they're there now

One of my lease partners reported lots of geese in our area this morning.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We had a few poule d'eau early this year, but only a briefly strong show last year. Don't know if that means our marsh is so sorry they won't stay anymore or was an anomaly. But there'll be around four dozen of the prettiest poule d'eau you ain't never did see in the Mudhole this year. (Mallards have been pressure washed, patched, sandblasted and hung out to dry for priming as soon as I get Sunday's doe boned out and in the crisper.)

Will try to remember when they're on the water in a couple weeks. Ducks are primed and ready for airbrushing once the dew is off. Well, that and the southerly wind shift will let me back into the spot with a real deer chance this morning. Northerly wind has had me hunting a super "deery" bottleneck, where it's impossible not to visualize shadows moving in the strip of trees and racks bobbing over tall grass, but it's between a small area of marginal habitat and hard grazed land. At best a travel lane for super horny (October rut here) bucks, like the one I photographed there a little while back, desperate for does that are far and few between here. Be nicest, though, just to be back where the ducks and geese are falling in.

I really want to be you.........

Was good to be me this morning. No deer were seen, but there was one heck of a pintail show, plus a whooole lot of specks that got bumped out of somewhere south came over. Was also serenaded by a coyote on the wood line for ten long minutes just before shooting light: grrrrr... And by a whooping crane that showed me something "interesting" in a troubling way.

The first time the whooper moved there was also a big rush of ducks, and I assumed whatever disturbed him/her pushed them, as well. But when he/she decided to come back to my end of the farm perhaps an hour later, it became evident that the whooper was spooking the ducks, as well as a wad of specks that had put in just across the levee behind me while it was away. When they got up, the dang whooper followed them as they circled the farm and eventually ran them clean off before settling down again itself.

I'm guessing that it's straight, perpendicular-winged silhouette was too eagle-like for the other birds' comfort. Not being a friend of the birds guys with guns are after, could prove a bad thing for the whoopers. Then again, not quite all of the specks hauled arse and the most of the ducks were quickly back in, so I may be imagining things...

Now fresh out of excuses not to tackle my duck painting, it's not so good to be me.

Rick wrote: there was one heck of a pintail show, plus a whooole lot of specks that got bumped out of somewhere south came over

We're just envisioning, using our imaginations, best I can do from my office. There's a speck hanging here above me that moves when I open the window and let the breeze come in, so guess that counts for something.

Lemme tells you kids, airbrushing is a sure 'nuff art form, and I'm no artist.

You have to practice.
Used to race them little tenth scale stadium trucks. The bodies are lexan. You paint the inside with an airbrush.
Got to where my trucks had flames that looked like they'd burn you and drips that looked like it'd put the fire out.
(was into flames and drips/drops)

You'll get good at it.

aunt betty wrote:You have to practice...

There's my rub: waited until the last minute and started in before I knew what I was doing. Got by on the coots with piss-poor technique and without knowing pecans about paint thickness and air pressure, but my mallard drakes look like they were done with a house painter's brush. So I've canned the project until I've at least learned the craft, if not the art.

Was Back to Reality Day in the field.

Heard nothing but a few distant teal kacks walking in to deer hunt this morning and sure missed the roars of waves of birds getting up. Starting our mornings by walking in to the sound of ducks popping off all over the farm and the rush of wings bumped from my ponds is something I've missed since leaving my last rice blind.

Still had a little early teal flight of mostly bluewings, some of which were nice enough to land nearby, and the whooper was there popping off again and again and again. But precious few other ducks or specks showed. Reminded me of marsh mornings when everything seems to be waiting on impending weather, rather than moving before it, as "common knowledge/sense" claims. And I missed the too rare for me in recent years sight of big squadrons of pintails dropping into rice from the heavens.

Since scads of birds were still falling in when I left the farm yesterday morning, I figured the farmer/crawfisherman was finally having some success at running them out, but a mature eagle eventually flew low overhead pushing what little had been around out ahead of his path. So he may have been the real culprit. Learned that eagles apparently aren't interested in whoopers, when mine not only stayed put as the eagle flew by but whooped up a storm at(?) it.

Having no deer to dress and box, I went to the marsh to cut up as much floating black dirt as I could in hopes the coming cool weather would help keep it down and found even fewer birds there, except for a slew of poule d'eaus and little mess of mixed little ducks in Ed's east pond and a few mottleds and woodies at the back blind. Was still neat to be in the marsh when a squall line blew in, except for the part about getting caught 200yds from the boathouse and my open-windowed truck and two closed gates from the hard road.

A couple of yesterday's misses:

a second noisy a--ed bird going meet the one that already had me grinding my teeth:


and one I'd of thought would shut it up, but nooooo...


And a last, for a while at least, too rare treat for a fellow now hunting a marsh mudhole instead of ag land:

Pintail like to tease

They'll do a lot more than tease on big open ag land floods, but we're lucky just to see some most days in our marsh.