WaterfowlForum.Net

Y'all shot Bambi.

He was a big youngun.

Cool! Nice work. Blind looks great. Love the way it hides in that grass. I’m sure you’re enjoying that much better compared to the monstrosity you had previously.

Glad you are getting some action in the new blind Dave

Awesome, congrats!

I hunted that same fog on Saturday - it was thick. It was still bad at 11:00 when we left our boat landing after doing some repairs

11/29/2018

Temp -MID 60'S - WIND -10-15 Overcast

Me and Bill

Had two spinners out this morning. Not sure if it made a difference.

Birds- (8)- 4 green wing 2 gadwall 2 shoveler ( In our dos gris marsh)

Saw a fair amount of big ducks this morning. (Pintail, wigeon, gadwall) Very comfortable hunt. I was really looking forward to the scuap this year for sausage but we have none. We did not see a scaup this morning.

DComeaux wrote:...( In our dos gris marsh)...

...We did not see a scaup this morning.

Must have been short-stopped by flooded corn.

Dos Gris marsh cracks me up... care to share your duck sausage recipe. I’ll be doing that soon


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Ricks on point, all your dogs are eating corn!!

Nice hunt, gonna try them myself in the AM

Good luck tomorrow

Stumbled across this today DC and figured you'd find it interesting. The map was produced by Osborne Lab and "demonstrates winter harvest distribution of mallards banded during winter in Arkansas over 3 different time periods." Definitely fewer, percentage-wise, harvested in south LA since 2000.

BGkirk wrote:Dos Gris marsh cracks me up... care to share your duck sausage recipe. I’ll be doing that soon


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I have it made and he's not saying. I do know it has cajun power and brown sugar as a couple of the ingredients.

11/30/2018

Temp -upper 60'S - WIND SE -10-15 Overcast

Me and Bill and Justin my son

Had two spinners out this morning and pulled both during the hunt.

birds- (1)- scaup

Had a few flocks of grays and pintail loafing around but none wanted to play. Mostly dead airspace. Thank God for the red fish!... My hands hurt.

Duck Engr wrote:Stumbled across this today DC and figured you'd find it interesting. The map was produced by Osborne Lab and "demonstrates winter harvest distribution of mallards banded during winter in Arkansas over 3 different time periods." Definitely fewer, percentage-wise, harvested in south LA since 2000.

46973213_386215645252286_8452851895267140648_n(1).jpg

Fist pump for being in south end of most recent dark spot.


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12/1/2018

Temp -upper 60'S - WIND Sw 10-12 Overcast (Front approaching from the west)

Me, Justin and Blake


birds- (7)- 3 gadwall 2 Blue wing 1 green wing 1 mallard drake

Rain coming down as we woke up this morning but the radar showed it was about over. We saw a fair amount of big ducks this morning getting the attention of many that didn't finish like we needed. Fog rolled in from the gulf around 7:45 but blew out fairly quickly. Skies cleared out about noon and we're looking forward to the hunt in the morning. Red fishing has been awesome, and I have a rod butt bruise on my abdomen.

Blake and Justin

12/2/2018

Temp - lower 60'S upper 50's ? - WIND- Light SE Clear skies

Me, and Blake

Birds - (5) 1 wigeon drake 1 mallard hen 2 gadwall 1 blue wing

Got those birds early and we were able to work multiple species flocks a time or two. Very little shooting in the area allowed us to actually work some birds this morning. Most we saw were very responsive yet extremely wary once on final approach. The little movement we had ended cold just after 8:00 AM this morning and we were out of the blind for 8:30.

(I don't remember seeing or hearing 20+ flocks as we did today containing multiple species. I'd assume there's not enough of their kind to hang with so what little is here are gathering together)

12/15/2018

Temp - lower 50'S - Brisk WNW wind

Me, Blake and Garlynn

Birds - (6) 1 Gw 1 scaup 4 gadwall

Very little seen this morning. Skies have cleared and winds have subsided substancially this evening. We'll get a better look at nothing g on the morning.

Add heavy overcast to the above post. I hate doing this on my phone.

12/16/2018

Temp - 50's ? - Clear wind none to light NW

Me and Blake

Birds - (2) greenwing

Very empty skies but we did see a few good bunches of green wing. We worked a nice bunch of pintail and I made the decision to try em on an overhead pass, but they weren't right. (desperation) My shooting sucked this morning, actually both days, with a couple of three missed opportunities to add to the strap. All of neighbors were walking around asking how everyone was doing. Seems all are struggling and not seeing birds.

Rick, this was sent to me yesterday and I laughed, remembering our earlier conversation. (coincidence)

Stepped outside just a few minutes ago (9:30PM) and heard my first migrating fowl of the year. It was specks, and I listened for a while to get direction of travel. It appeared they were heading SSW.

I was thinking fullbody, rather than silhouette:

Rick wrote:I was thinking fullbody, rather than silhouette:

inflatable-cow-costume.jpg

I laughed out load!!

Our marsh reported a small influx of gwt this morning and were said to “dropped from way high”
I thought surely it would be a bust. Never know til you go,
Kinda wondered what your place would’ve been like this morning


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BGkirk wrote:Our marsh reported a small influx of gwt this morning and were said to “dropped from way high”
I thought surely it would be a bust. Never know til you go,
Kinda wondered what your place would’ve been like this morning


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You made me remember we had one hunting this morning. He Just told me he had 5 on the water early (teal) then it died. He had a couple of flocks of Pintail work him but didn't commit. His birds we're taken by 7 am and he lost 2. He did not fire another shot until 9, just before he left. He ended up with 2 teal and a gray. He said he did see more GW, big bunches of those, and a lot of pintail, compared to the weekend. The gray ducks weren't there.

"Why Migrate? I was photographing wintering mallards on the Chena River in Fairbanks yesterday at -10F and thinking about this question as I did for my masters work on Canada Geese in Pennsylvania some 27 years ago. The mallards on the Chena are fed..."



"Wondering if you could expand on your comment about the mallards on the Chena being fed?"

"An individual has formed a non-profit group to feed the ducks that winter in the warm water effluent from a power plant in Fairbanks. By doing so they have increased the number of wintering mallards from about 25 that used to stay before they were fed some 10 years ago to about 500-600 now. A number of us have opposed this feeding program because of concerns about disease risk and because these ducks happily migrated prior to the feeding. However, we have failed to convince this well-intending group to do otherwise and their activity may not be illegal or if it is, law enforcement has been unwilling to pursue the issue. Others folks that use the frozen river for a trails, are concerned about ice fog on the roads, or think the effluent is an inefficient use of waste heat have also failed to motivate a different management system for the warm water effluent. The discharge permit was just renewed for 5 years with increased flow and temperatures. It's an interesting local issue that will certainly be resolved somewhere down the road when we move away from coal-fired power. In the meantime, the ducks are well fed, we have weighed a bunch of them, and this is a relatively small number of birds in the grand scheme of what might be some 20 million mallards in North America."

If you do face book you can read more at this link.
/www.facebook.com/Black-Brant-Research-2014242845497460/?__tn__=%2CdkCH-R-R&eid=ARAJMbx0OeZ8rD0iiueC8yVRd6iDi0Zthgce7FtwJqru85KSuXpw8gfNqUWZ6x3jwouTZJhyS3BUJTJl&hc_ref=ARTiyu5dnemEyEk5uN4bOWwmdFoJtwDKriqX4ygjiyh8mE_jMTx_4JCi7spFKWHZr3c&fref=nf&hc_location=group

Warm water and food, exactly why migrate. In the midwest with countless warm water discharges and millions of acres of grain fields within easy flying distance, those birds that don't migrate unless forced to are not going to be forced to.

Take away the warm water discharge and all the food in the world won't keep those mallards in Fairbanks.

Same if you take away the food.

It takes both.

Flooded corn provides food, but NOT warm water. Once they freeze, the mallards are out of there.

Now if there is a warm water discharge nearby for them to roost, they will stick around. However, millions of acres of corn fields provide more food than the ducks can ever eat in a winter.

What's interesting, just hunting on Lake Erie, why do bluebills ever migrate? The incredible amount of dead zebra mussels underneath the docks they had pulled out of the lake for the winter was unbelievable. All birds had a healthy layer of fat on them.

SpinnerMan wrote: Flooded corn provides food, but NOT warm water. Once they freeze, the mallards are out of there.

I've seen oodles and oodles of contradictory evidence of this theory you speak of.

DComeaux wrote:

SpinnerMan wrote: Flooded corn provides food, but NOT warm water. Once they freeze, the mallards are out of there.

I've seen oodles and oodles of contradictory evidence of this theory you speak of.

Where do the ducks roost? They need a roost. If they have a roost nearby, they can keep using the corn as a food source.

However, if there is no open water, they are not sticking around.

Geese will roost on a frozen lake that doesn't have snow on it. I've never seen ducks do the same. And once you get snow on the ice, the geese cease using it as a roost.

SpinnerMan wrote:

DComeaux wrote:

SpinnerMan wrote: Flooded corn provides food, but NOT warm water. Once they freeze, the mallards are out of there.

I've seen oodles and oodles of contradictory evidence of this theory you speak of.

Where do the ducks roost? They need a roost. If they have a roost nearby, they can keep using the corn as a food source.

However, if there is no open water, they are not sticking around.

Geese will roost on a frozen lake that doesn't have snow on it. I've never seen ducks do the same. And once you get snow on the ice, the geese cease using it as a roost.

How about roosting in a "farming for ducks" frozen corn field with a touch of snow?

DComeaux wrote:

SpinnerMan wrote:

DComeaux wrote:

SpinnerMan wrote: Flooded corn provides food, but NOT warm water. Once they freeze, the mallards are out of there.

I've seen oodles and oodles of contradictory evidence of this theory you speak of.

Where do the ducks roost? They need a roost. If they have a roost nearby, they can keep using the corn as a food source.

However, if there is no open water, they are not sticking around.

Geese will roost on a frozen lake that doesn't have snow on it. I've never seen ducks do the same. And once you get snow on the ice, the geese cease using it as a roost.

How about roosting in a "farming for ducks" frozen corn field with a touch of snow?

48382964_2235103293189688_8212015905614331904_n.jpg

Geese roost routinely on ice, but I've never seen ducks roost on frozen lakes like that. Notice they are not in the corn. They are on the open water. With that many ducks, I'd bet there is still open water in the middle of that pack. If not, they won't stick once there is a little snow on the ice.

It still looks like ducks piled into the last open hole of water which is why they are packed so tight.