2018-2019 Season Log

[SpinnerMan]

with three paying guns in the blind tomorrow, it won't be safe for a gallinule to try sneaking by.

I see the gallinules went unharmed

20190106_112545.jpg

[Rick]

Date: 1/6 Sun

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: dead calm to light southerly late in the hunt

Temperature: pleasantly cool

Moon phase: new

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Precious little of anything, local or otherwise, stirring.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Tripped a couple mallards with sparse finesse on the squacky DC, momma called some bluewings and single kacked some spoons into returning (both after I got the spinners shut off) and teal hailed the pee out of the MVP to break down and bring around a BIG bunch of high greenwings.

Hunters: 3, Paul, Tim and Ben again

Guns:

Malfunctions: The most seasoned pro in the pile had but one shell in his gun when the big bunch came and flared up like balloons. (Ever notice the dang things are slower when you're empty?)

Dog(s): Marsh was reluctant to return with the first bird (spoon), and it turned out that he'd put a serious rip in it and knew he was in a bind. Was suitably remorseful even before I saw why, but he's still going to carry a live homer around on his next few bathroom runs.

Special Equipment: SOS, but the spinner was better off than on, and I readjusted the MMM's anchorage to the high water, so it's splashing well again and may have been helpful with the little ducks.

Curses: That Cherry Ridge was conspicuously quiet and we had the "big" hunt, sums up our current state of affairs.

Kudos: Nice guys and we still had a nice time.

Birds By Species: 2 bw teal, 2 gw teal, 2 mallards and 2 shovellers

[Rick]

with three paying guns in the blind tomorrow, it won't be safe for a gallinule to try sneaking by.

I see the gallinules went unharmed

20190106_112545.jpg

Even they are in hiding. And it occurred to me this morning that it's January and I've yet to see a Coopers or sharpshin hawk eying my homers, much less lost any to the wintering prey birds' annual onslaught.

[SpinnerMan]

We are going to hit 50 tomorrow. Just got back from FL where there were plenty of gallinules around. I have been driving around about an hour taking care of errands and haven't seen a goose. No snow and just some skim ice on the smaller bodies of water, so it doesn't surprise me.

[Duck Engr]

3 guns and only two gwt out of a big bunch?!

[Rick]

Two, deux, dos, zwei, due, dwa, hai... Any way you say it, 2 fell. But it was four guns.

[Duck Engr]

Haha forgot to count your gun as well. We’ve all been there. 5 of us had a group of 50 poop all over us a few years back. Killed 2. Then had a group of 8 come 5 minutes later and we killed 7 of them. Too many distractions in big groups of teal!

[BGkirk]

I for one, shouldn’t even shoot in big groups. I’ll kill one the first shot, but after that my barrels seems to bend


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[Rick]

I generally see enough of them that Marceau Ledbettering (shooting "up amongst") them isn't an issue. Though I'm still more apt to go two for three - or never catch up to the first - than trip the triple I'd intended before being reminded, again, of the benefit of reloading.

[Rick]

Date: 1/7 Mon

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy to partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: Supposed to be southerly and building but was nil to faint northerly and back to not.

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: dark

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Awful. Most of what little we saw were passing spoons.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: A pair of presumably fresh pins did it right, as did three greenwings. The end. Aside from a few spoons buzzing by wide and a few scattered locals hopping out in the veterans home without giving us a moment of hope.

Hunters: 2, annual regular Bruce from MD and Rusty from Houma (where it also sucks) on his first visit here.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh tracked the second of the two teal we dropped from a trio to the boat run west of us and lost it there.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: No ducks.

Kudos: Good guys to spend a bad morning with.

Birds By Species: 1 gw teal and 2 pintails

[DComeaux]

It sure hasn't seemed like a "normal" fall and winter as it pertains to fowl down here. The lack of migrating fowl this winter (sights and sounds) when I'm out and about is real and saddening. Even with all of the back and forth bickering taking place on this migration issue I had a moment of thought on this that was clear and sobering. This may just be the beginning of the end of what I once knew. I sure hope not.

[Ericdc]

It’s almost 70 degrees. We were froze solid at this time last year. It’s not the end.


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[Ericdc]

We haven’t had ice once at my farm this year. People still killing BWs up here.


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[DComeaux]

I don't want to clog up Ricks log with a conversation, but I wanted to say that we've had weather like this for as long as I've been hunting, the highs and low's, but for the most part it has always been relatively warm down here in the winter. In the 80's I remember walking between watering holes in Holy Beach at night in shirt sleeves, and sweating in the blind in late December, but we always had some semblance of a migration.

It would take some time to do it, but we could compile data of weather to our north and here starting in the 80's to now and make comparisons. I did this for a short stretch for some years earlier than this recently and it looked similar to this years weather on average. There is more involved than just the weather. If you want to continue this conversation, copy and paste this and hop it over to my log page.

[SpinnerMan]

I don't want to clog up Ricks log with a conversation, but I wanted to say that we've had weather like this for as long as I've been hunting, the highs and low's, but for the most part it has always been relatively warm down here in the winter. In the 80's I remember walking between watering holes in Holy Beach at night in shirt sleeves, and sweating in the blind in late December, but we always had some semblance of a migration.

It would take some time to do it, but we could compile data of weather to our north and here starting in the 80's to now and make comparisons. I did this for a short stretch for some years earlier than this recently and it looked similar to this years weather on average. There is more involved than just the weather. If you want to continue this conversation, copy and paste this and hop it over to my log page.

We are in the 50's and raining up here in Chicagoland. I think that is the big difference this year. It's not supposed to be this warm up north.

The other thing is that we had a hard freeze back in November and then it warmed up. When it does that, it screws up the season. It's like the birds just disappear. My guess is the birds that moved with that cold have settled in to wherever they are down south and are behaving like local birds that have it all figured out. The birds that didn't move are doing the same up north. I did actually finally find a bunch of geese driving around yesterday. They are all bunched up in safe zones. Big numbers in a small number of places with almost no small groups scattered around like early in the year. And they don't move a lot beyond going to their safe feed and back to their safe roost.

I think it's not your warm weather, but our very cold November and very warm December and so far in January that has screwed things up across the board.

[Rick]

It would take some time to do it, but we could compile data of weather to our north and here starting in the 80's to now and make comparisons. I did this for a short stretch for some years earlier than this recently and it looked similar to this years weather on average.

Looking back through the years at the snow coverage shown on this site, https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/index.html?region=National&year=2019&month=1&day=7&units=e, tells a different story.

[SpinnerMan]

It would take some time to do it, but we could compile data of weather to our north and here starting in the 80's to now and make comparisons. I did this for a short stretch for some years earlier than this recently and it looked similar to this years weather on average.

Looking back through the years at the snow coverage shown on this site, https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/index.html?region=National&year=2019&month=1&day=7&units=e, tells a different story.

cool link The animation for the season was pretty neat.

[Rick]

Date: 1/8 Tue

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: dead calm all hunt

Temperature: t-shirt

Moon phase: dark

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Nursed a scratch while seeing nothing within calling altitude for a very long time, but did see a few very high flights of little appearing ducks heading SW early.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Saved by the momma call with spinners killed.

Hunters: 2, Bruce again and Steve from Chicago

Guns:

Malfunctions: MMM died.

Dog(s): Marsh had an easy morning

Special Equipment: SOS on until teal broke down, then off. Believe not having the MMM splasher may have cost us a teal op.

Curses: Ours was the big hunt for the marsh.

Kudos: Bruce took it well.

Birds By Species: 3 bw teal, 1 gw teal and 1 shoveller

[Darren]

Curses: Ours was the big hunt for the marsh.

Kudos: Bruce took it well.

Birds By Species: 3 bw teal, 1 gw teal and 1 shoveller

Yikes! Though surely dealt pretty rough conditions; short of locked in fog, probably about as bad as it gets for winter hunting conditions in our area. "T-shirt, dead calm". Tomorrow looks promising

[Rick]

Date: 1/9 Wed

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly to clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE strong

Temperature: 50s chilly in wind

Moon phase: 12% waxing

Special Notes: my favorite weather and no birds

Waterfowl Activity: Same old thing - or lack of things.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Big greenwing bunch turned to raucous calling and worked beautifully, finishing to momma call, but both mallards had to be pried off other locals. Dos gris turned so hard for burring that it just had to be that, instead of a jack.

Hunters: 2, Bruce and Steve again

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): easy morning

Special Equipment: spinners on then off for everything.

Curses: still just stale birds

Kudos: beautiful morning that at least felt right

Birds By Species: 2 gw teal, 2 mallards, 1 shoveller and 1 scaup

[SpinnerMan]

22 degrees right now with two nights in a row in the teens and no serious warming forecast after that (high for rest of month is 38), but no real snow in the forecast. Hope that's at least enough to convince some new birds to head down your way. I looked at a recent survey up in our area. Ducks, specks, and snows were way above 10 year averages for these areas and Canadas way below. That cold just isn't going to move the Canadas and won't unless we get some snow which isn't in the forecast, but their forecasts are terrible so that could change quickly. At least its finally cold enough.

[Darren]

22 degrees right now with two nights in a row in the teens and no serious warming forecast after that (high for rest of month is 38), but no real snow in the forecast. Hope that's at least enough to convince some new birds to head down your way. I looked at a recent survey up in our area. Ducks, specks, and snows were way above 10 year averages for these areas and Canadas way below. That cold just isn't going to move the Canadas and won't unless we get some snow which isn't in the forecast, but their forecasts are terrible so that could change quickly. At least its finally cold enough.

Very telling. Thanks for sharing

[DComeaux]

It's all SpinnerMans fault. He works for the government.

[Duck Engr]

Rick have you still been “Big hunt of the marsh” on most days?

[Rick]

No, I'm on the weak end of the marsh for little ducks, so we're lucky to pull off par this split.

[Rick]

Expect to find Darren in camp this morning. Hope he brought ducks.

[Deltaman]

Hope they finally showed up for you, especially after reading Eric's post from his Northern LA hunt yesterday...............Good Luck!!!!

[Rick]

Date: 1/10 Thur

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: zip to moderate NE

Temperature: chilly

Moon phase: dim

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Same far-and-few-between and mostly stale story. But did get to enjoy thinking we might get a speck op.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Didn't get to shoot our big ducks as pretty as we generally do, but at least got to shoot them.

Hunters: 2, WFF's own Darren and his buddy, Canaan

Guns:

Malfunctions: Found a new motor for the MMM, but it was still inop and will need looking into.

Dog(s): Marsh was balky about handling through deep water.

Special Equipment: Just the spinners were running, though I killed them for the big ducks, as usual, and also for the little mixed group we plucked the spoon and bluewing from.

Curses: Just no birds.

Kudos: Still managed an enjoyable morning.

Birds By Species: 1 bw teal, 1 gw teal, 4 mallards and 1 shoveller (that was thin as a lead poisoned bird, only without the green diarrhea stained bunghole they have)

Photo Ops:

Lagniappe: Darren and Canaan reaffirmed my belief that most folks bring the biggest part of their hunts with them. As did a note annual regular, Bruce, from the past few slow days, left with me: "Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, it does..." Bruce has seen our hunting at it's pretty incredible best and still managed to enjoy the good stuff around its very near worst. Pretty darn sure his blind partner for two of those mornings had a far worse hunt.

[DComeaux]

I have an MM motor I'll give you and It's in great condition. I lost a decoy arm and the MM is lo longer manufactured, so no parts available, I checked. I will not use it ever again and would prefer to not see it just waste away.

[Rick]

How about I just send you an arm? (Am pretty sure I can get the motors pretty reasonably from Minn Kota and/or get what I have rebuilt.)