Still a little shell-shocked from the season that largely wasn't, but need to get the log "wrap-up" done and behind me.
Date: Our so-so September teal season and a second worst since the 3/30 years first big duck split was followed by a far and away worst since 3/30 years, if not ever in LA, second big duck split.
Time: Aside from one afternoon with a grandson doing the calling for specks that went unlogged, all of my hunts this regular season were morning hunts...
Location: And at the mudhole.
Cloud Cover: Nothing happened to sway my strong preference for clear skies or, if it must be cloudy, rain.
Wind Direction and Velocity: But my faith in both strong northerly winds for big ducks and strong southerly winds for little ones took a beating.
Temperature: Way too many "t-shirt" or nearly so days throughout.
Moon phase: Special Notes: Seemed we had some or most of our best frontal weather early in the first split, and it was meaningless.
Waterfowl Activity: Nearly barren or flat barren skies plagued us all season, and were all the more vexing on days when the blinds to our east were getting what at least sounded like significantly more shooting. Much of their shooting could be attributed to the ringnecks, which have been our marsh's predominant wintering residents in recent years, but of which my blind's season take has been just 18 for each of the past two years. Couldn't help but note their near complete absence from the big ponds they used to at least frequent to our south, if not stray from, in years past.
While the season without meaningful snowfall to our north took the surprise out of our dearth of big ducks, I'll admit plenty of head-scratching over how few mornings there were enough greenwings to spill over into my end of the marsh. Easterly, more broken marsh blinds saw more than we did, of course, but I doubt any found it a good year for them.
The pond-hopping big ducks that usually hang out in the broken marsh "veterans' home" to our north were conspicuously far and few between, as well.
Waterfowl Responsiveness: The latter of the above observations might, at least in small part, be attributable to my more careful management of when and how sightings there were treated and could help explain our mudhole record year for mottleds. Can't say we killed them all, but we did trip up a mess of what was around.
Hunters: For the most part, the folks I got to hunt with were my season's highlights.
Guns: I had an O/U shooter in the blind this year who actually shot well with it - and fired no loose rounds getting it closed!
Malfunctions: My circa '90s Montefeltro started hang-firing again but was fixed (presumably long term) with a new trigger assembly.
Dog(s): Find myself thinking more and more often of how seamlessly Marsh, aka: "the bug," has fit into the succession of fine dogs I've been blessed with.
Special Equipment: It's long been my usual practice to run a spinner, and now two, for teal and shut it off for big ducks or geese. But more and more teal are plainly pushing off them and not returning unless I shut them off (and call like crazy and/or catch them up in a "momma" series. Mallard Machine turned splasher remains helpful in putting teal front and center but easily overdone with big ducks that are hanging up.
Curses: Logged the mudhole's third and fourth scratches (on consecutive days) in fourteen seasons during this one's second split. Also had at least three loose rounds, all thankfully harmless. And I'm sure I disappointed an awful lot of nice folks who'd been excited about duck camp prospects that didn't pan out.
Kudos: Most took out lickings well - at least on the outside.
Birds By Species: My parties shot just 464 ducks (one mallard banded) and no geese at all during the regular season, which averaged out to just 2 birds per gun. Adding our September teal brought the 2019-2020 season total to just 660 birds. Of the 15 duck species we shot, greenwings led the regular season totals with 109 followed closely by 107 mallards. And the only species of real note were a mudhole record 22 mottled ducks and the blind's 5th true black duck.
Photo Ops: It wasn't all bad, and this is the photo I choose to remember it by:
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Lagniappe: From last year's summary's "Lagniappe" section:
Last year I loaded this section up with plans for the mudhole's future, at least some of which worked out pretty well. This year...well, I'm still licking my wounds and maybe feeling too sorry for me and mine to envision ways to improve our lot that are within my power. Hopefully, some will eventually surface, as a waterfowler without schemes for improvement isn't having nearly as much fun as those who have them.
And while it's definitely so that I again find myself disheartened and "licking my wounds," I do, at least, have some scheming for improvement to look forward to. While it's always been easy for me to find ways to put safe, effective and easy to rise up and shoot through cover over my ag land hunters, the applicable cover types and logistics of using them in the marsh have long precluded getting much of anything directly over the mudhole's pit. Which leaves us exposed to overhead game and more of the need to help hide themselves up to guests who either can't or, much more often, simply won't.
But one of our subleasees has either found or developed what's far and away the most natural artificial cover material I've ever seen and blessed me with enough of the synthetic "grass" to keep my mental wheels turning for deployment possibilities that guests can't (OK, hopefully won't) destroy, get tangled up in or lose an eye to. We'll see...
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