2020-2021 Preseason...

[Rick]

Rick - are y'all expecting a full house for opening weekend...

Same party has booked our marsh for the opening weekend since way the hey before it was our marsh. But business in general is way off, and will likely be largely drive-ins.

[MARSH BEAR]

Rick - how long will you wait for someone who is late to show up?

[Rick]

Long experience suggests that anyone more than 15 or 20 minutes late ain't coming, but I'll hang out nearly to, if not, LST.

We plan on 45 minutes to an hour's lead time, depending on what we know about the party, but unencumbered by folks inclined to piddle around, the dog and I can be from camp to blind in 20 minutes.

[Rick]

As of this morning, there are 84 more banded specks, 16 more banded mallards and 8 or 10 more banded wood ducks out there. Roughly a dozen hen specks are also sporting transmitters, which was the last of those for this year, barring recycling of recoveries. Still more mallard transmitters, but only one hen was captured.

I understand that the science fails to support sparing hens, given our current harvest rate, but repeated out of whack ratios, like this latest 15 to 1, suggest that it sure wouldn't hurt.

[Darren]

Very cool! Seems like a heck of a speck haul in the nets

[SpinnerMan]

I understand that the science fails to support sparing hens, given our current harvest rate, but repeated out of whack ratios, like this latest 15 to 1, suggest that it sure wouldn't hurt.

I always find that interesting because I just don't see that up here. I wonder if there is some difference in migration between hens and drakes. Maybe the hens and drakes are feeding on very different things when the get to southern LA. It just seems very odd and out of line with the population.

Do you harvest nearly all drakes? For me, mallards are the primary thing we hunt and ratio is just 1.9 drake per hen and that's with preferentially harvesting drakes making the ratio of what we see a little lower than that suggesting about 35% to 40% of the mallard population we see is hens (between a 1.9/1 and 1.5/1 ratio). At 15/1 ratio that means just 6% of the population is hens.

Something interesting going on with your trapping program producing this out of line ratio. Have any of the biologists offered any suggestions why what you trap is so out of line with the population as a whole?

[Rick]

Never tracked drakes to hens in our mallard bag but may start "just to see". (Might be fairly representative, given how many of our hunters are in "Ducks are ducks." mode.)

Paul, the biologist in charge of the program, finds it concerning, too, but hasn't offered explanation beyond shrinking nesting cover on their breeding grounds. Past ratios, regardless of whether December or much later captures have been way out of whack, too, but this one was crazily so.

[Rick]

Very cool! Seems like a heck of a speck haul in the nets

We were maxed out on crate capacity and released several blues that would have taken up potential speck hen space. What was really cool was their release this morning, but there were just four of us on hand for that and all too occupied insuring the collared birds got a good start to film the most impressive release I've seen.

[Deltaman]

Glad your banding/transmitter efforts paid big dividends this time Rick, and Thank You for your efforts towards the migratory information that will be gleaned from it

[Rick]

May very well be as close as I get to speck hunting this year. Too seldom see them at all, much less at halfway reasonable altitude, on my end of our marsh, and always seem to have folks I've no chance of luring them close to when we do.

Wonder how JohnC is faring at his dad's place...

[Johnc]

May very well be as close as I get to speck hunting this year. Too seldom see them at all, much less at halfway reasonable altitude, on my end of our marsh, and always seem to have folks I've no chance of luring them close to when we do.

Wonder how JohnC is faring at his dad's place...

John c not faring much of anything. 20 ducks and 12 geese.

No feed bare dirt bean field. Bare dirt levee.

No holding power the year.

[Johnc]

57424CF8-DDF3-474A-AC8D-18BBAC82B325.jpeg

4E53631E-8EE9-4433-A377-831E2AA3E0AF.jpeg

[Johnc]

894E0610-0314-4010-B712-E3233936114C.jpeg

Best I could make low profile

[Rick]

Ouch! Gone are the days when there was enough weed seed to hold birds on bean ground long after the beans had rotted.

[Rick]

96B8F9C3-EFAB-4895-8FB2-C05637755874.jpeg

Best I could make low profile

That photo didn't show, but I blew up an earlier one and see your issue. When I had that, I made a number of similar high spots along the levee.

(Then our genius guide staff would carry them to the blind and make it a skyscraper.)

[Johnc]

4F1497EA-491D-4D96-9A83-AB300B7DDDE6.jpeg

[Ericdc]

John you got water now?


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[Johnc]

B05C17C6-A9E6-43E0-9300-2F413E52D157.jpeg

[Johnc]

Goose dry,duck water

[Johnc]

3870B492-FDC7-4E95-B59D-EC77AB996B76.jpeg

2E3B5FD8-9E7D-4D19-8172-8F552CDE6C87.jpeg

28ED1606-5C10-447B-825C-FDD8E2294B8A.jpeg

Did get some with my old 1100

[Ericdc]

Goose dry,duck water

Ok, was wondering about the pic you posted with all the water?


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[Rick]

Spent some discouraging time in the marsh this morning: nothing but some east end jacks.

[DComeaux]

Well that sucks.

[Ericdc]

Arkansas reopens tomorrow:

Migration report


With Arkansas’s second duck season set to open Friday, hunters will have their work cut out for them, as low water conditions across much of the state, and a correspondingly low number of ducks, promise a challenge.

“Water is a problem. We haven’t had a major rain in quite a while now,” says Luke Naylor, waterfowl program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC). “It’s pretty clear that surface water is what drives duck numbers, and it’s extremely low right now. There’s really not a lot out there that hasn’t been artificially provided.”


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[Rick]

Friend with an Arkansas camp told me Wednesday that their farmer was still reporting "still no ducks," so their pumped water hasn't been showing much. He's going anyway, and so will we.

[Darren]

Water is a problem. We haven’t had a major rain in quite a while now

Sure ain't mad about that. There are some rain events in the forecast, just thankfully shouldn't be the big flooding-every-inch-of-earth type that kills us.

Unfortunately, there's been no weather/front event since we closed last weekend, just a steady warmup. Looks like we'll kinda get one Sunday night into Monday and a reinforcer Tuesday night. Long term, though? Really not seeing any big arctic invasions.

[Rick]

May not be a bird riding it, but was still sweet to air the bug in what at least feels like a meaningful front this morning.

Currently plan to take advantage of Thursday's calm to ready the mudhole for the final round of 2020-2021's season, so I'd like to think I can remain hopeful at least until then.

Can say that while I've yet to see what might remotely be labeled "specklebelly day," the bug and I have been treated to multiple goose sightings on our morning rice country constitutionals for the past three mornings in a row. Not much of a record, but a record all the same...

[Darren]

Have a work trip in N. La tomorrow, may swing by the bunkie area farm to check on things since I'll be in the area. For now planning to be in the marsh this weekend so not sure if I'll head out to look around on friday or just wing it on Saturday.

[Ducaholic]

Have a work trip in N. La tomorrow, may swing by the bunkie area farm to check on things since I'll be in the area. For now planning to be in the marsh this weekend so not sure if I'll head out to look around on friday or just wing it on Saturday.

Net year I hope you don't have to make that decision.

[Rick]

Heard this morning that there were 40-50 "mallards" at our back blind yesterday. So, "we'll see"...