2017-2018 Season Log

Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby SpinnerMan » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:13 am

johnc wrote:There are theories that there may be enough people up North using ice eaters and these pumps on refuges to keep water open during freezes so the ducks no longer migrate----I have hunted with ice eaters going in NE Arkansas---I dont think there is enough of that to hold birds up

Cooling lakes and no till farming. It takes snow to move our ducks and mallards down. Freezing is not close to cold enough. We need arctic weather and especially snow. While you mentioned a lack of food, we have a virtually infinite supply if it isn't covered up with too much snow. Mallards just do not show up in force up here most years until it is arctic. My dream season we be a split. We get to hunt October and January. The last day I hunted in mid January I saw thousands of mallards. Then it warmed up and most of the birds headed back north.

Birds roosting in big water staying as far north as they can and eating in massive fields traveling around in huge flocks.

I think those subpopulations of mallards are not harvested at any where nearly the same rates as the mallards that live on smaller water. These birds have been off limits to hunters since December. The mallards that work their way all the way to the Gulf in smaller flocks using smaller water are picked off more frequently and for much longer. It doesn't take too many decades of that before you have changed the average behavior of the birds. The total population is up, but a much greater proportion are birds that have never traveled further south than north central Illinois spending their winters in huge flocks on large bodies of water eating corn. Even those traveling further south, more exhibit this behavior because there are big bodies of water and corn the whole way.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:21 am

John what you said about folks seeing all these birds on their fields and marshes and believing they are new ducks is spot on, it’s PRESSURE! Not new birds. Heck why would birds be migrating in the last 2 weeks with all the hot weather and south winds in February.


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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby aunt betty » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:32 am

To fully understand "it" you southern guys are going to have to go hunt at Braidwood in a blizzard.
I've seen "it" up close and personal. There's a triangle where Ottawa, Illinois is one corner.
In that triangle...OMG you've never seen so many Canada geese.


The down-side is that you have to knock on 1000 doors to get permission on one field MAYBE.
The guys up there that kill lots of geese work their asses off to make it happen.

If you ever end up in Ottawa there's a steak house that sells duck and fried duck skins. Worth every penny.


Ice eaters aren't what's changing the migration. The goose clubs in southern Illinois all got burnt at least a decade ago.
The ones that survived are duck clubs now because the geese don't go there no more. They stay up here where all the grain is laying exposed. Nuclear power plants are like super industrial ice eaters. They're closing Clinton nuclear power plant down so my local hunts are going to suffer. Things change and then they change some more and then about the time you get used to it they change again. ADAPT or give it up.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:32 am

Up here we have some mallards around early, but it’s usually heavy on the gadwall and teal thanksgiving week unless we get an arctic. It’s usually Christmas or New Years before we start seeing them in bigger groups.


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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:34 am

aunt betty wrote:To fully understand "it" you southern guys are going to have to go hunt at Braidwood in a blizzard.
I've seen "it" up close and personal. There's a triangle where Ottawa, Illinois is one corner.
In that triangle...OMG you've never seen so many Canada geese.


The down-side is that you have to knock on 1000 doors to get permission on one field MAYBE.
The guys up there that kill lots of geese work their asses off to make it happen.

If you ever end up in Ottawa there's a steak house that sells duck and fried duck skins. Worth every penny.


Canada geese don’t really light my fire, although we are making an Oklahoma trip next January and will kill some there.


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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby aunt betty » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:49 am

I'm forced to make some assumptions because I can't remember who is where.
Eric is in Wisconsin and John is either Louisiana or Arkansas. (I think)

I'm going to give some real actual correct info: I live on the WEST SIDE of Champaign, Illinois.
This conversation would make more sense to me if I could confirm them assumptions.

If you like googling find the intersection of I74 and I57.
Find the fire station and the post office on Mattis Ave.
I live behind the fire station on Cynthia drive by the weird corner that's sort of a cul-de-sac but isn't.
Might even see some white boxes by the back fence. Those are bee hives.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:53 am

I’m in northeast Louisiana...


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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby aunt betty » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:04 am

Somewhere in my head I knew that. Sorry.

The furthest south I ever hunted was Bayou Meto.
The only thing left on my bucket list is The White River.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:04 am

johnc wrote:The one comment I saw I really liked,it was said jokingly but I liked it---BAN ALL MOTORIZED DECOYS OF ANY KIND---GO BACK TO HUNTING THE OLD WAY WITH GOOD CALL SKILL,GOOD CONCEALMENT,REGULAR GOOD REALISTIC DECOYS AND JERK CORDS IF MOTION IS WANTED


Pennsylvania still has a ban on all electronic attractors, which would have seemed the logical place to draw a "fair chase" line at one time. But if the spinning genie goes back in the bottle at this late date, it will probably be as part of a more sweeping movement aimed at eventually eliminating hunting, itself.

I'm all over the board on them myself: philosophically and aesthetically opposed to any electronic attraction, but as long as it's legal and can be of advantage, I'm going to use it. Since I'm taking people's money to put birds in front of their guns, it would likely be more unethical not to. Just bought and rigged a second standard Mojo spinner to position where I hope it will help improve my blind's little duck gunning by drawing them from some of the more open marsh they favor that my current spinner (positioned as a "NO FIRE" boundary for the dog's sake) can't be seen from.

Had someone told me I'd now be doing that back when spinners first became available in this part of the country, I'd of howled. Even when the very first to show at our camp was demonstrated, a half way observant soul could see that a lot of the birds they initially attracted pushed off well before getting into decent range. And when Doug gave the two of us who were spinner hold-outs Auto-Ducks, I pulled mine from my rice field pond five of the first seven days we tried it, because while teal ate it up, too many big ducks that got a good look at it couldn't be brought back around and finished. Calling was simply more effective.

That was before remotes, and since my location and setup drew the heck out of teal, anyway, my spinner finished that first season under the blind bench. Never left the decoy shed outside of teal season in any of the years to follow, including my two in our marsh's east blind, until I took over the Mudhole and found myself well removed from the little ducks' natural flyways. There were enough big ducks around that being short on teal didn't seem much of an issue until near season's end, when the big ducks went missing and the eastern blinds were limiting on green-wings while we fell well short day after day. Auto-Duck came out of his usual winter hibernation and put my hunters back on birds.

Been a number of refinements since, both to lessen the whirligig's ill affect on big birds and heighten it for little ones, but the bottom line is that, whether or not a second proves more boon than bane, there's little doubt going to be at least one in the Mudhole as long as I'm there.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby aunt betty » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:35 am

If you had a spinner in '95 you'd see why they sold like hotcakes.
Being the only one that had one at the public walk-ins meant you had to deal with creepers.
I mean guys who walk 50 yards closer to your hole each time you shoot until you're surrounded by a ring of guys that are all thinking about shooting swing ducks. It was really bad at certain cites.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:41 am

SpinnerMan wrote:
johnc wrote:There are theories that there may be enough people up North using ice eaters and these pumps on refuges to keep water open during freezes so the ducks no longer migrate----I have hunted with ice eaters going in NE Arkansas---I dont think there is enough of that to hold birds up

Cooling lakes and no till farming. It takes snow to move our ducks and mallards down. Freezing is not close to cold enough. We need arctic weather and especially snow. While you mentioned a lack of food, we have a virtually infinite supply if it isn't covered up with too much snow. Mallards just do not show up in force up here most years until it is arctic. My dream season we be a split. We get to hunt October and January. The last day I hunted in mid January I saw thousands of mallards. Then it warmed up and most of the birds headed back north.

Birds roosting in big water staying as far north as they can and eating in massive fields traveling around in huge flocks.

I think those subpopulations of mallards are not harvested at any where nearly the same rates as the mallards that live on smaller water. These birds have been off limits to hunters since December. The mallards that work their way all the way to the Gulf in smaller flocks using smaller water are picked off more frequently and for much longer. It doesn't take too many decades of that before you have changed the average behavior of the birds. The total population is up, but a much greater proportion are birds that have never traveled further south than north central Illinois spending their winters in huge flocks on large bodies of water eating corn. Even those traveling further south, more exhibit this behavior because there are big bodies of water and corn the whole way.


When I moved from the Mid Ohio Valley to Southwest Louisiana and began duck hunting here in '83, the only thing more surprising to me than shooting mallards in November was the astounding percentage of ducks that could resist the charm of what I was certain the finest duck caller in the entire MOV. "Up home," we just didn't see other-than-tame mallards until the snow got deep to our north. So I've no doubt, whatsoever, that there are both mallards moved by photo period and those only deep snow cover or freezing rains will starve into moving - as well as some in-between in nature, especially once accustomed to mostly feeding in water, rather than dry fields. But finding and/or maintaining open water has never in my lifetime seemed much of trick for the birds disinclined to migrate. Can remember them rafting by the thousands on a power plant's hot water outlet when the whole of Lake Erie seemed frozen.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:51 am

aunt betty wrote:If you had a spinner in '95 you'd see why they sold like hotcakes...


That date surprises me. The first I heard of, much less saw, was a California import a well-traveled doctor showed up with in what I'd think the tail end of '90s - and the following year they were everywhere.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:55 am

Might also confess that shortly after a writer I was hunting asked what I thought of them, and I told him I figured the craze would pass pretty quickly.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby aunt betty » Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:06 am

I think I'm off by two years. The Explorer...I didn't get that until 96 or 97.
Must have bought the mathews in 98.
Had the explorer that day. Buddy tore the door panel off the driver's side and escaped.
What an effed up day.
Had a whole crew of GW's checking me that time. They had a call on someone hunting off the area and thought it was me.
Nope.
Not this time.

How I got rid of them was by asking if they'd help me find my dog. Bye (wave wave)
He was hiding in the brush watching the whole thing. SMART DOG!
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby SpinnerMan » Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:16 am

aunt betty wrote:If you ever end up in Ottawa there's a steak house that sells duck and fried duck skins. Worth every penny.

What's the name? I'm in Ottawa quite a bit.

I shot one with a band down there a few years ago on my birthday in fact.

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Ericdc wrote:Canada geese don’t really light my fire, although we are making an Oklahoma trip next January and will kill some there.

Hard hunted Canada geese like I hunt up here. I love it. Good adaptive calling, paying attention to what they are doing, ... I'd hunt them every day if I could. I'm actually disappointed when the first news birds show and they come in like retarded pigeons. Pulling singles off of flocks. Working birds that know they need to be cautious. Talking back and forth with singles. It lights my fire.

johnc wrote:SW Louisiana--hunt in the meanest speck country on the planet---to the point now where you either know what you are doing,even then,still accept the fact that you need to adapt, or you go home with nothing or very few---AND even if you know what you are doing ,,every hunt is a fight to kill and you better know how to break and fool traffic or all that is harvested is maybe a few juveniles or geese already coming to the field for whatever reason

Not too dissimilar to where I hunt for Canadas around Braidwood.

The difference being the birds come and go a lot more frequently. When the first show, any idiot with decoys can kill geese. Give it a few days and things start getting harder. A week and no snow on the ground and things start getting a lot tougher. I hear a lot of people say you can't kill them without snow on the ground :lol: It's a lot harder and calling is a lot more important. While I am a longggggg way from your skill level with the call, I'm much better than most. Since I hunt a club where I often end up hunting with guys I never met before. The rules of the club make this preferable a lot of times in order to get one of the better blinds. I've yet to run across a guy that can actually call. Some do OK with basic let the geese know you are over there and up there odds over just decoys, but few are more than a one trick pony. Calling, especially when there is no snow on the ground becomes a much bigger factor.

The other thing is we have two types of Canada geese that behave differently. We have the giant resident geese. They are much more callable or that is just what I have far more experience with. Singles are much more likely to break off and they seem much more talkative. Then we have the much smaller migratory Canadas that are much more difficult to call. They are a lot noisier, but less talkative. I can strike up a conversation with a big resident Canada. The smaller ones just seem to make noise or are speaking some French Canadian dialect of the little Canadians from the far north that I don't understand versus the American Canada goose spoke by the big geese from Illinois, Wisconsin, and southern Canada.

I have two goals for this off season. 1. work on improving quality of the sound in my calling. 2. Try to figure out what I should do differently with the little geese. I think it's motion in the spread, but maybe I need to change my calling approach.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby SpinnerMan » Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:19 am

And SpinnerMan has nothing to do with duck spinners. I used to fish for nearly everything with homemade inline spinners. It has to do with spinners for steelhead trout. I've caught everything from common carp to king salmon with my homemade spinners. I just use that on every board.

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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:07 pm

johnc wrote:I know the whole story of the guy who developed it before publically available and how ducks just went in on straight lines down with no circling


Think there are probably a bunch of "first spinner" stories. First of which to my ears or eyes was that a California strawberry farmer saw ducks tolling to the strobe effect of his big anti-frost fans and built one to imitate that.

First similar device I saw was a set of wind driven paddle-wheels with silver reflector tape on the paddles. Attached across a decoy's back with a big rubber band, and the flashing looked like ducks splashing. He had video of scads of ducks falling right into a number of them - scattered around in a few hundred decoys.

Being one who's spent a crazy amount of time waterfowl watching before and after the season, I've long been aware of how much they splash and tried several of my own ways of duplicating it. Of which my modified Mallard Machine has been by far the most effective, but it, like most jerk string arrangements, turned out to be very easily overdone with big ducks. Close teal, however, tend to home right in on it.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:21 pm

Re: Canadas, any bird that's under pressure is going to wise up. But even back in the mid-'80s, I had to abandon the silhouettes and one-piece Carrylite shells that had been SOP for successful resident (and migrant) Canada hunting in Ohio when I moved to Southwest LA. Repainting wasn't enough for the specks, except for the standard-sized G&H shell portion of my Yankee spread.

Think John mentioned Big Foots, and having seen what Canada BFs did in the North, I jumped on the first run of specks they made (and then discontinued for several years) at the then insane cost of $36 per. But the specks were plainly unimpressed by the sacrifices I made on their behalf and would seldom finish nearly as well to the BFs as to the smaller standard G&H speck shells that were then our gold standard decoys. Several serious hunters I knew experienced the same, leaving us all to think that the larger size just made it that much easier for the speck to peg the BFs as manikins.
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:07 pm

And speaking of decoys: finally took advantage of our recent warm weather to finish power washing my decoys. Really ought to don boots and a slicker and do them all as soon as they come out of the pond, but...
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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:02 pm

We had quite a few ducks land or try to land in the middle of or right next to the FB specks and mallards last year, which are placed fairly close to each other relative to rest of spread. It’s pretty realistic when u have 1-2” water within gun range of your pit.


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Re: 2017-2018 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:20 pm

johnc wrote:no motion


Do what?


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