Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:34 am

Same area. Not surprisingly, everyone wants their land's egg money and no one wants the farm returns, but that's where they go.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Tue Jul 31, 2018 5:57 am

DComeaux wrote:Would love a large farm of indigo.


Me, too. But sure as we got it, someone without would come along campaigning to keep us from artificially flooding it and taking "their" ducks...
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Ericdc » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:04 am

Rick wrote:
DComeaux wrote:Would love a large farm of indigo.


Me, too. But sure as we got it, someone without would come along campaigning to keep us from artificially flooding it and taking "their" ducks...


Haha


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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:52 am

Rick wrote:
DComeaux wrote:Would love a large farm of indigo.


Me, too. But sure as we got it, someone without would come along campaigning to keep us from artificially flooding it and taking "their" ducks...



Natural is the way to go. This still happens today.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:00 am

Rick wrote:
DComeaux wrote:Would love a large farm of indigo.


Me, too. But sure as we got it, someone without would come along campaigning to keep us from artificially flooding it and taking "their" ducks...


:lol:


Rick,


I'm familiar with the plant you speak of as "indigos" from seeing them myself here or there, but when I search indigo the blue/purple "indigo" flower plant comes up, surely not same. Known as something else?

"indigo bush"??
PCD3538_IMG0027.JPG


Is there a seed the birds are eating?
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:55 am

Leaves look like and indigo strain, but I'm not sure about those catkins on it. Maybe just haven't paid attention. Here's a clip with what we call "curly indigo," which is likely the strain I've pictured above:



What's just called "indigo" by farmers here is a sturdier/taller strain with much longer seed pods that tends to be somewhat more solitary. Both are duck and goose candy.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:39 pm

BGcorey wrote:
Rick wrote:Leaves look like and indigo strain, but I'm not sure about those catkins on it. Maybe just haven't paid attention. Here's a clip with what we call "curly indigo," which is likely the strain I've pictured above:



What's just called "indigo" by farmers here is a sturdier/taller strain with much longer seed pods that tends to be somewhat more solitary. Both are duck and goose candy.


that has to be planted? Sounds like it isn’t common to find naturally growing


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It's been growing naturally here for as long as I remember. It's not a farmers friend, so it's be poisoned and removed from wherever crops grow.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Ericdc » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:41 pm

BGcorey wrote:
Rick wrote:Leaves look like and indigo strain, but I'm not sure about those catkins on it. Maybe just haven't paid attention. Here's a clip with what we call "curly indigo," which is likely the strain I've pictured above:



What's just called "indigo" by farmers here is a sturdier/taller strain with much longer seed pods that tends to be somewhat more solitary. Both are duck and goose candy.
that has to be planted? Sounds like it isn’t common to find naturally growing


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You could have seen a patch of it behind my pit last year had you come hunting with me......


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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:09 pm

Seed seems to stay viable dang near forever in the soil. Probably the neatest duck show I've ever seen was the year after a pump-off area that had been in beans since my arrival here was taken out of production and no longer pumped off for a year. Was nuts how many birds found and used it, as well as how safe they felt down in it. Drove a tractor through it looking for a popped blind, and birds just rolled out of my way and landed again a little way over. Super hunting that season at the "turnaround blind" Jarren and Co. had for a while years later.

But the big cheese didn't want to spend the money to pump off, and the area soon became a relatively barren lake, until he finally did so a couple or three disappointing seasons later. When he did, he sublet it for grazing and that was the end of that. Still good for specks and decent for ducks, but not remotely a shadow of its potential with wise, and artificial, wet soil water management...

So much for "natural," Dave.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Tue Jul 31, 2018 10:02 pm

Rick wrote:
So much for "natural," Dave.


Well, it has to have the right conditions, and sometimes in nature it just happens.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:25 am

Absolutely. But maintaining a really meaningful stand generally takes some help, intentional or not.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:47 am

Though once pretty common, the last 300+ bird September season I've had was at the turnaround in 2011:
2011-2012hunting001.jpg


when the mudhole looked like this:
2011season028.jpg


I loved hunting back there. So it was, of course, much more often leased out than not, despite my friend, Doug's, oaths to the contrary...
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:27 am

2010 and 2011 were drought years. And also the best two for mallards at the mudhole during my time there, water or not:
2011-2012hunting007-5a.jpg


Tough year to be the dog.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:58 am

Those are essentially "before and after" pics, with the one of the coyote coming out of the slurry onto his stand being from early in the regular season after our rich neighbors spent six figures pumping. In between the "before" and "after," I picked away with the Go-Devil prop until I had a slurry:
2011-2012hunting014-3.jpg


Which would then rise as "black dirt flotant"/humus as the bacteria decaying it released CO2, and I'd pick away at that:
2011-2012hunting014-5.jpg


until it was slurry again:
2011-2012hunting018-1.jpg


over and over and over:
2011-2012hunting039.jpg


until we had something to hunt over that looked enough like water to put birds over and in it:
2011-2012hunting009-2a.jpg


Much as I love working in the marsh, I'm not looking forward to quite that much of it again. Know there will still be plenty of grinding regardless, as it wouldn't be "the mudhole" if that weren't part of most years, but sure hoping for enough rain to make it a more normal mess.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:16 am

Last pic reminds me that I've still not acquired an appropriate rubber ducky to ad to this year's spread. Thinking either one with shades or a graduation cap.

Did put the final touch on the Go-Devil boat this morning. Last season's log noted that we didn't kill anything while I was in the pond with it, which was quite unusual, as teal, in particular, and sometimes other species have periodically screwed up as long as I hunker in it and remain still beyond calling. So I camo-painted it earlier in the off-season to improve our luck on such future occasions, but finally got around to adding a heater hose bumper to insure uncased guest guns aren't marred in transit when I request that their cases be left in the truck. (Where they won't be laid across our blind cover immediately after I request that they not be.)

Am almost officially out of pre-season preparations I can complete at the house, with only decoy painting projects on humidity-hold remaining.

Guess it might benefit someone for me to note what I think I've learned since my last painting notes. I've left my two paint color test specks in the sun since top-coating one with Testor's Dull Coat clear and the other with Krylon's clear coat, and both seem to have started to frost, for lack of a better term, as the frost-like discoloration can be scraped off the underlying paint. I'll not use either in the future and see how that goes...
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Sat Aug 04, 2018 4:50 pm

Yes and no. A more powerful mudboat can move more water, and erosion is what's really doing most of the work. But our mudboat is keel cooled and easily overheated if you run it onto the black dirt to let it spin in one place, as works best, because if you just chunk the black dirt up by running through it, it's the devil to then break up all the chunks with the mud boat. Plus it's not nearly as maneuverable as my "crawfish"(18" shorter than "long")-tailed Go-Devil and much tougher to work around in a small space like mine.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:48 am

I see that just two of us have signed up for 2018 logs per Olly's post in "The Blind" section. Everyone else bailing out?
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby SpinnerMan » Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:25 am

Rick wrote:I see that just two of us have signed up for 2018 logs per Olly's post in "The Blind" section. Everyone else bailing out?

For some reason it is not showing in the portal so I never saw it. My guess is I am not the only one.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:11 pm

SpinnerMan wrote:
Rick wrote:I see that just two of us have signed up for 2018 logs per Olly's post in "The Blind" section. Everyone else bailing out?

For some reason it is not showing in the portal so I never saw it. My guess is I am not the only one.


It's in the announcement section at the very top of the page. I hadn't seen it either.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Sun Aug 05, 2018 2:19 pm

Rick wrote:I see that just two of us have signed up for 2018 logs per Olly's post in "The Blind" section. Everyone else bailing out?



Had sent Olay a PM on it last week, and hadn't seen his thread since then. IN though!
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:44 pm

Gear shifting time. Picked our last few nests of that season yesterday and planted the first two blinds of the coming one today. (One replacing a leaker and the other so a bazillionaire can squeeze his land investment that much harder.)

Dave, the operator told me he's buried 122 blinds in the past couple years, and you know as well as I they weren't all or likely even mostly replacements. That's what I see as the greatest threat to LA waterfowling.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:04 am

Rick wrote:Gear shifting time. Picked our last few nests of that season yesterday and planted the first two blinds of the coming one today. (One replacing a leaker and the other so a bazillionaire can squeeze his land investment that much harder.)

Dave, the operator told me he's buried 122 blinds in the past couple years, and you know as well as I they weren't all or likely even mostly replacements. That's what I see as the greatest threat to LA waterfowling.


WOW :shock:

Say 22 were replacements, likely conservatively, so just a call 100 more blinds of pressure hailing highballs and clucking away at specks
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