2020-2021 Season Log

Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Wed Jan 20, 2021 4:35 am

First time we've shot more than three in a morning since the second opener, and we shot these three and five at a time out of just two ops. But decidedly better than not seeing them at all.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:46 pm

Date: 1/20/21 Wed

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy to partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: Easterly moderate

Temperature: cool

Moon phase: 41% waxing

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Certainly not swarmed, but the most birds we've seen in some time on our end.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Seemed like everything but the spoons (which blew on by) would work pretty.

Hunters: 2, once a year duck hunters on holiday from MS deer camp, Chris and Ken

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The bug must be about to eat a duck, 'cause I'm busting proud of his work today: super long mark and open water chase plus a second long track and open water chase. (Both mallards.)

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Just that so many big ducks got out.

Kudos: Nice guys passed a big time.

Birds By Species: 5 bw teal, 2 gw teal, 2 mallards, 2 pintails, 2 ringneck and 1 shoveller
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby DComeaux » Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:59 pm

Very nice....Glad to see the numbers.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:31 pm

Date: 1/21 Thur

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: heavy

Wind Direction and Velocity: SW fairly strong early to moderate

Temperature: t-shirt

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: About as dead as it gets, which is saying something, but par for westerly winds.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Spoons came to die, as did a pair of jacks I thought had to be dos gris.

Hunters: 2, Bubba and Kent

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): easy morning

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: just the lack of game

Kudos: Guys hit what came.

Birds By Species: 2 ringnecks and 5 shovellers
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby MARSH BEAR » Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:07 pm

And the commission wants to push our coastal season later into January.
I have been hunting the Holly Beach area since 1983, and after the first week in January the hunting goes to s--t. Our best hunting is the opening weekend (second Saturday in Nobember) until the first part of December, after that it is all downhill.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby BGkirk » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:46 pm

MARSH BEAR wrote:And the commission wants to push our coastal season later into January.
I have been hunting the Holly Beach area since 1983, and after the first week in January the hunting goes to s--t. Our best hunting is the opening weekend (second Saturday in Nobember) until the first part of December, after that it is all downhill.
Is it the commission or 90% of coastal hunters who just don’t know they are better off hunting in nov-dec than Jan


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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby DComeaux » Thu Jan 21, 2021 8:32 pm

BGkirk wrote:
MARSH BEAR wrote:And the commission wants to push our coastal season later into January.
I have been hunting the Holly Beach area since 1983, and after the first week in January the hunting goes to s--t. Our best hunting is the opening weekend (second Saturday in Nobember) until the first part of December, after that it is all downhill.
Is it the commission or 90% of coastal hunters who just don’t know they are better off hunting in nov-dec than Jan


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I'm fairly certain that these decisions are made without any regard to the average hunters concerns, rather it's a select group with influence that is heard. I would love to squeeze in a 45 day season beginning the 2nd weekend in November.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Ericdc » Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:40 pm

For the west zone, I know I would rather the early days in January that they are now showing in a split rather than the last 20 days of January.

They wanted to do a split like that in the east zone, at least some commission members did. I guess they got the message that in normal years we very much want early January days in east zone.


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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:23 pm

Date: 1/22 Fri

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: heavy w/mist to w/rain

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE moderate

Temperature: cool

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Squealer day at the mudhole. Didn't see much else, but the most whistling ducks we've seen in some time.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Whistling ducks liked my chatter, but are apparently wising up, as I had to kill the spinner to get them over the hole.

Hunters: 2, brothers Rob and Ryland

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh had a big time.

Special Equipment: SOS, albeit treating squealers like other big ducks, instead of teal

Curses: Might have missed a few...

Kudos: Nice guys had a big time.

Birds By Species: 6 black-bellied whistling ducks, 1 gadwall, 4 gw teal, 2 fulvous whistling ducks and 1 wigeon

Photo Ops: Rainy photo op:
013a.jpg


Runaway black-belly:
010a.jpg
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Deltaman » Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:49 pm

Fine strap of birds Rick!!!!
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so"
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby DComeaux » Fri Jan 22, 2021 7:13 pm

Awesome....... Did they gift you some squealers?
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:43 am

Nope. Nary a fresh bird at our house for a while now. Told them how good they are, and they're anxious to try them.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sat Jan 23, 2021 1:56 pm

Date: 1/23/21 Sat

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: heavy and misty to mid-hunt fog, albeit not too heavy

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE moderate

Temperature: warm to chilly when wet

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Squealers found somewhere else to be, spoons were common but mostly smarter than us and dos gris were, as usual, stone stupid with one landing after his buddy was shot. Fog prevented seeing the kind of high flights we've been getting most big ducks out of.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: See above, plus lone mallard and gray bought in entirely.

Hunters: 2, one lone pay hunter, Paul, plus Doug's great-grandson, Cole

Guns: Paul was an O/U guy

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Another "woulda, coulda, shoulda..." hunt where we killed most one at a time.

Kudos: Nice fellow passed a nice time.

Birds By Species: 1 black-bellied whistler, 3 bw teal, 1 gadwall, 1 gw teal, 1 mallard, 2 scaup and 6 shovellers
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:08 pm

Date: 1/24/21 Sun

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: All morning fog.

Wind Direction and Velocity: light to moderate SE

Temperature: cool

Moon phase:

Special Notes: last day of regular season

Waterfowl Activity: Hard to tell with the fog but heard or saw birds periodically, though not nearly so often as we might wish, throughout.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Whistling ducks ate up the herding dog whistle, and pintails worked pretty as a picture, but too few teal could be convinced to return after their first pass.

Hunters: 2, Paul and Cole again.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning, but Marsh broke, and it may well have cost us a chipped black-belly when I let him get away with it, instead of putting him in the boat and hauling butt down the boat train ASAP. Don't know that doing so would have insured it's recovery, only that we didn't and it wasn't.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Our pay hunter was much more interested in something on his phone that being ready to shoot passing game that wasn't inclined to wait while he traded phone for gun. Cost more than a few shooting ops.

Kudos: He still seemed happy with how it went.

Birds By Species: 7 black-bellied whistling ducks, 2 gw teal, 2 pintails and 1 shoveller
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Duck Engr » Sun Jan 24, 2021 4:00 pm

Glad you were able to close it out with a few birds despite the fog.

Whistlers stuck out to me this year, especially the last couple weeks. Mudhole record?
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sun Jan 24, 2021 5:12 pm

We've a veterans' weekend coming up, so we're not quite done yet, but this may well have been a record or near so whistling duck year for the mudhole. In some past seasons, they've been the saving grace of generally poor/bad west wind days and otherwise virtually, if not, absent from my end of our marsh. While whistling ducks aren't counted in the aerial surveys, the concentration on the Cherry Ridge marsh above ours gained notice in this January's by being one of the two largest duck concentrations on the transects flown, so I guess we were bound to eventually get a bit of their overflow. (CR filled three parties on black-bellies in their blind closest to that body this morning.)
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sun Jan 24, 2021 5:18 pm

Ran back through the logs here and found we had 21 black-bellies in 2014-2015, which is one more than my preliminary count for this year. Most other logs so readily available have shown under 10 more our norm. Guess throwing in this season's four fulvous could still make it a "squealer" record.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Darren » Sun Jan 24, 2021 6:54 pm

Rick wrote: (CR filled three parties on black-bellies in their blind closest to that body this morning.)


:o
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:08 am

Not too, too many years ago, the fellow who manages CR fussed me about one of our guides shooting squealer "trash" and screwing up everyone else's "good" duck hunting with the shots. Told him that if he'd eaten them he'd be shooting them, too.

At that time he owned the Shop-A-Lot convenience store in town, where many of we guides would meet for coffee and bull before heading to our camps. And he met me there one morning with, "Rick, you've got to try this duck." and a wave toward a platter of mostly picked-over duck bones, including some mighty long drumsticks.

Might be a mistake to think I've never reminded him of that...
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Deltaman » Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:25 am

Sweet wrap-up to a not so sweet season Rick, and again, Thank You for taking us along :beer:

"Curses: Our pay hunter was much more interested in something on his phone that being ready to shoot passing game that wasn't inclined to wait while he traded phone for gun. Cost more than a few shooting ops."

Arghhhhh..........tough enough on you to work so hard and see chances missed because of an inattentive customer, but I bet Cole was fit to be tied :(
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Duck Engr » Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:45 am

Rick in that situation with your hunter not paying attention do you wait for them to shoot first or once you say “go ahead” is it every man for himself?

Funny how ones perspective change on game. I can remember as a kid fishing in the gulf with my Dad and his friend catching a fish (think it was a trigger fish, but don’t quote me on that) and my Dad’s buddy saying “trash fish, throw it back”. Now there are limits on them.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:14 am

While it's the norm in our area for guides to shoot with their hunters, I'll almost never shoot first, even when advised to go ahead and do so. Might happen, almost by accident, when I've been riding birds until they're at the edge of range while waiting for my hunters to start and we've a scratch in the making. Never once there's a bird in the blind.

My blind's "rules of engagement" are free-fire on birds I'm not working that show over the decoys while we're not working anything, but waiting for my "go-ahead" when I'm calling. (Even if something's landing.) Which results in missed ops when folks are standing there studying their phones when game appears out of the early light or fog.

Be interesting to know how many bird lives phones have saved in my blind, alone.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:17 am

Re: trigger fish, Capt. Rick told his parties to throw 'em in the box "...I know someone who eats them."

Took a box cutter to get the hide off them, but they're work it.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby SpinnerMan » Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:13 am

Rick wrote: but waiting for my "go-ahead" when I'm calling. (Even if something's landing.)

I have to remember that. That's an easy way to explain to newbies.

We get a lot of wood ducks that buzz us and mallards that work. Don't want to screw up the mallards but don't miss on the quick opportunities on the wood ducks.

Rick wrote:Which results in missed ops when folks are standing there studying their phones when game appears out of the early light or fog.

Most blinds I hunt have benches and it always surprises me how many of the people I hunt with spend a significant amount of time sitting on the bench. No way you are getting shooting at anything that buzzes you. I've got quite a few wood ducks with other people sitting on the bench. There's a lot of time you don't even have time to pick up your gun if you are up and zero chance from the bench or looking at your phone. When there are a lot of wood ducks around, sometimes I keep my gun in my hand. They appear and are gone so quick even if they pass right over the decoys.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Thu Mar 11, 2021 1:35 pm

Have put off closing the log on our 2020-2021 season for much too long, so "here goes nothing..."

Date: September teal was as strong as one could ask. Regular season's first split was "OK". Regular season's second split pretty much wasn't.

Time: Our ag land situation was such that I never made an other-than-morning hunt after the first week of September teal.

Location: Home semi-sweet home at the mudhole.

Cloud Cover: Fewest fog days in memory and mixed success in all weather types, but nothing to badly rattle my general faith in blue sky.

Wind Direction and Velocity: Came to dread westerly winds. Weren't all bad, but the smart money would bet on anything else. Even no wind.

Temperature: While early fronts seemed a good thing, there were more than a couple disappointing Northwesterly ones.

Moon phase: (Too lazy to go back and try to correlate moon phase success.)

Special Notes: Salt surges didn't make it to our marsh, so the only negative effect our hurricanes Laura and Delta may have had on our hunting was keeping a lot more hunters than ducks out of large parcels of affected marsh.

Waterfowl Activity: Don't believe I saw but two big, but all-too-brief, "migration type" flights all regular season. And on the less grand, local activity scale, a relative handful of jacks was all that wintered within hailing distance of the mudhole. The "veterans home" out front was all but barren once we clipped most of its mottleds, and a precious few jacks used the open ponds out back.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Can't say I learned any new tricks, and the old ones may have worked too well on the local mottleds that usually seem to act as pilot ducks leading new birds to the VA Home.

Hunters: COVID concerns absolutely hammered the camp's business, but I stayed busier than I might have wished, given the givens.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Proud of the bug. Marsh didn't find or catch them all, but was worlds better than doing without in that regard, didn't run anything I'm aware of off, and made a lot of friends.

Special Equipment: Had more, particularly second split, teal push off the spinners than in memory, but there's no telling how many might have been drawn from their more open water flyways at all without. And, while I don't think I've previously mentioned it, I experimented with synthetic cover called "Blind Grass" and was well pleased with it.

Curses: Aside from the lack of game, mostly just "crowd control" issues. And of special note this season, cell phones' contribution to those issues. Bad enough folks think birds are blind and worse when they're caught phone-handed.

Kudos: Took a lot of great folks hunting.

Birds By Species: Was a little better than last season, albeit much more appreciably so the first split than second. And a strange season in terms of species taken: with grays sharing the top spot with green-wings and mallards falling way down the list from their once normal second spot. We shot exactly one speck.

Photo Ops: Don't recall much of note in this regard, either. Must try to do better.

Lagniappe: Not sure what it means that I'm OK with how it went. Just hope to go again in September.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Duck Engr » Thu Mar 11, 2021 2:27 pm

Great recap Rick and as always, we keyboard warriors are very thankful for the ride on weekdays when we can’t be out there doing what you do.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:23 pm

You're most welcome.
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Ducaholic » Fri Mar 12, 2021 8:48 am

Thanks Rick... :thumbsup:
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Deltaman » Fri Mar 12, 2021 11:37 am

Thanks Rick, always much appreciated!
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so"
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Re: 2020-2021 Season Log

Postby Rick » Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:00 am

Thank you guys and out host, of course, for helping keep the site open and my feet to the fire. Never had any luck keeping a log up throughout a season before making online commitments.
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