2018-2019 Preseason...

[Rick]

Any internal difference between the mallard and teal aside from tuning?

Here ya go:

Boss hen in brown, the teal call blue.

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The teal call with squack for sure, and love the tone of the boss hen, only have to watch myself and not overblow, it won't scream but has great sound at more typical volume.

Pretty unique reed configuration on the mallard. Have to wonder how much difference the notch makes on the governing top reed.

[Darren]

Seeing as I'm miles more a call operator than a call tinkerer, not the one to opine on what tweaks would do what. Like these two out the box though.

As John pointed out, this mallard call would be more of a late season call for me in the fields since it indeed would get swallowed up. Then again, everyone and their mom is hollering high low and everywhere with acrylics, so that more natural volume and tone may be the ticket. One way to find out......

[Rick]

Like these two out the box though...

That's a good start. Confidence is huge in calling, and it's hard to give a call you don't like a fair trial on game.

Well, unless the situation's a desperate one. Wasn't keen enough on how my Deceiver ran to give it a go until the frustration of "too high" game pushed me into it. Then it "grew" on me pretty quickly. Hoping to see more of the same long distance leverage on bluewings next month - but long ago learned that what I think the bomb may be a dud. We'll see...

[Rick]

Used an airboat training day for one of the boss' sons as excuse to cruise Cherry Ridge and our marsh along with the fellow who keeps CR the most well maintained (and safest to learn in) marsh I've seen. Saw some woodies, mottleds and whistling ducks in CR but none in ours - or teal anywhere, to include the miles of flooded rice stubble we passed at first light getting there.

CR remains in good shape with plenty of water showing, but a lot of what was water in ours when last I was through it in an airboat is now mud, to include the remains of what was once more open than not to the north of the mudhole. Difference between their maintained and our neglected marsh was staggering.

Mudhole is in bad shape with enough floating black dirt that several laps with the airboat made little impression:

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So I've my work cut out for me if it's to be teal hunted at all.

[Darren]

ohhhhhhhhh man, sure does look like it could use a pass or fifty. Be careful out there. Down at the camp myself today, hoping to head out to the lease for a look at the blinds.

Got a second hand report of a few bands in the greater Gueydan rice region this morning, no clue on specifics of location beyond that.

[DComeaux]

I guess you can be thankful for not having just weekends to work on that place. I'd be chomping at the bit all week thinking about that, just like I felt at the Marceaux farm.

Do you think a LARGE sludge or trash pump would work in your situation?

[Rick]

I guess you can be thankful for not having just weekends to work on that place. I'd be chomping at the bit all week thinking about that, just like I felt at the Marceaux farm.

Do you think a LARGE sludge or trash pump would work in your situation?

An industrial sludge pump is what it really needs and will never get.

Went back out this afternoon and, ironically, bailed a lot of water out of the boat we'd left in my slip but still had to wrestle it off dirt where we'd left it floating and finagle it around in the sludge outside the boat house before learning I can still make it all the way to my blind, Though just barely in spots. Then spent a couple hours just breaking a path for surface water to follow around the blind island - water being what it takes to erode the black dirt into slush.

And you're right, I could write the project off until we had another foot of water if I only had weekends, as it would firm back up too solidly between them.

[Rick]

Pump it to holes about as far from the pond as a manageable discharge hose allowed, so as not to create a hard berm for willows to take around the pond. No way to get any of that out there, much less paid for, so it's back to work I go...

(Currently counting blessings for the one boat we can still get in and out of the boathouse.)

[Rick]

Met the sun at the marsh this morning for seven exciting hours of this:


before lightning (accompanied by entirely too little rain) drove me out. Gonna be one sore old hillbilly in the morning, but still have a few more hours to go on the first of however many passes it takes to keep it from popping back up. Good news being that subsequent ones tend to be appreciably easier. And I did get a good lick in today:

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[Ericdc]

Good work


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[Rick]

The mudhole came into being as Lulu's Camp's "No. 4" under the direction of this fellow, Obrey Trahan (shown in it then):

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Though it was eventually abandoned due to lack of low water access, I'm told by those old enough to know that their/his original (or oldest anyone recalls) No. 4 blind was in a better spot well to its current south, presumably (given the course of a long abandoned and grown over boat trail) on this pond:

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Obrey solved his low water problems by moving No. 4 to a wide spot in the main boat run which, I'm told, was the sight of an old seismic survey dynamite hole and know to be the deepest area of our marsh that I'm aware of. And, according to those old enough to have hunted it with him, Obrey killed a whole lot of ducks in his new location, too. Unfortunately, those who followed him did not, and the pothole, which acts as a sump for all of the boat prop related debris in the trail dumping into it, was eventually all but completely abandoned and began not just being filled from below but overgrown by the surrounding flotant.

By the time our camp took over the marsh and I took on the No. 4's rehabilitation (2007?), the hole's east "bank" flotant was nearly to the blind's dog stand and thick enough to be mucked out with a potato hoe and carted off - which I spent much of a summer's free time doing, in order to open the hole enough for decoy placement encouraging birds to finish square in front of the blind. (Intended to dig the northern "bank" back some, too, but ran out of time, energy and will.) And that project spawned "the mudhole".

Would be much better for the location's future if I'd let it grow over thick enough in dry years for the vegetation's roots to help muck out what they're anchored in and haul it away, but dry years also greatly limit where meaningful quantities could then be dumped without creating new problems. Well, that, and I'm older and lazier now.

[Rick]

Been there a few times by airboat and "access" was a poor word choice, as it's the pond, itself, that becomes too shallow to get around in when the marsh is down.

Speaking of which, I finished putting as much of the first lick as I could on the mudhole today and found most of its west end too shallow to grind, so barring meaningful rain there's a significant area where fallen birds may not be retrievable, depending on whether Marsh can manage to get around in it. Have visions of him stuck and me unable to do anything about it.

Also tried taking the boat trail west out of the mudhole toward the back blind to see how far I might get and didn't even make it out of my pond before having to back out via push pole. Barring the kind of storm no one wants, we can write off the back blind for September, and though none are nearly so plagued by black dirt as the mudhole, getting in around the bigger but shallower blind ponds to my east could prove challenging.

Saw no ducks at all during today's venture.

[DComeaux]

I sure hope you get a good rain or two before teal season. It's going to be a struggle for us carrying a hunting load until the surface drives grind a channel in the top crust.

[Rick]

..carrying a hunting load...

Don't even want to think about carrying two - or three - guys down what's left of the run between Clyde's blind and mine.

[Rick]

Sum-beech. Met the sun at the marsh again this morning and found the boat I'd left floating sitting cockeyed on the bottom. Marsh is going down and black dirt in my pond was, as expected, up. Just getting to the mudhole is becoming a challenge, and it was 8:30 before I had a show of water all the way around the blind island. Went better, of course, after I had that water to work with, and roughly half of what I'd opened last Sunday is now open again. Hope to be back at it at first light in the morning, if not later today.

But if we don't start seeing significant rain, there will soon be no water to work with

[Rick]

See on the LA drought map that our little tri-parish corner is only experiencing a "moderate" drought. Makes me feel for the folks in NWLA suffering "extreme" drought.

[Darren]

See on the LA drought map that our little tri-parish corner is only experiencing a "moderate" drought. Makes me feel for the folks in NWLA suffering "extreme" drought.

yea it's really colorful up that way, i'd imagine a lot of sloughs and ponds way down or dry

[Ericdc]

Yep it’s very dry up here in north Louisiana. Yesterday I drove my truck where only an atv should go, and only had to use 4wD when I was turning around cuz the dust was so deep.


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[Ducaholic]

See on the LA drought map that our little tri-parish corner is only experiencing a "moderate" drought. Makes me feel for the folks in NWLA suffering "extreme" drought.

This is easily the driest I have seen it in ten years in Avoyelles Parish. I can't access any of the smaller lakes I normally hunt. IT's dry and getting dryer by the day.

[Ericdc]

See on the LA drought map that our little tri-parish corner is only experiencing a "moderate" drought. Makes me feel for the folks in NWLA suffering "extreme" drought.

This is easily the driest I have seen it in ten years in Avoyelles Parish. I can't access any of the smaller lakes I normally hunt. IT's dry and getting dryer by the day.

2011?


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[Ducaholic]

This year to date is dryer than 2011. Access at this point is more limited. Drought is good for the health of these lakes. Just hope I can float a boat on the third Sat. in November.