2020-2021 Season Log

[Deltaman]

Nothing like family time during the holidays, especially when spent in a duck blind. Sweet Christmas Holiday hunts Rick, and glad the weather and birds cooperated

[Rick]

Date: 12/26 Sat

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear to partly and back

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE light to moderate

Temperature: frost on the boat

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: next to no little ducks seen, but a little batch of black-bellies, a pair of grays, very few mallards and mottleds and several high pintail flights came by

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Thankfully sweet.

Hunters: 2, JJ and Mark who usually seem to bring ducks with them, but fell short in that regard this time.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): easy morning with just one boat ride

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: could have used more birds

Kudos: Made good on what came and passed a fine time.

Birds By Species: 3 black-bellied whistling ducks, 2 gadwall, 1 gw teal, 2 mallards, 3 pintails and 1 ringneck

Photo Ops: The bug with the last of our pintails:

012a.jpg

After which, of course, they attacked us without provocation:

[Rick]

Date: 12/27/20

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE moderate

Temperature: 40s

Moon phase: 91% waxing

Special Notes: Cy's birthday present

Waterfowl Activity: Seemed slow again, but enough to keep Cy hopeful.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Excellent when others' shots or our crowd control didn't get in the way.

Hunters: 2, grandnephew, Cy, and his dad, Josh, both on their first duck hunts

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): The bug stuck with a tipped and diving spoon a very long time before it managed to beat him, an a hawk beat us to another long fly-off.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Could have used more ops to get the guys better acclimated to their new game.

Kudos: Did enough that Cy's plainly ate up with it, so it was a sweet, sweet morning.

Birds By Species: 2 gadwall, 2 mallards, 1 pintail and 2 shovellers

Photo Ops: Good dad, Josh, and stone-cold duck killer, Cy:

017a.jpg

[Duck Engr]

Glad the young man enjoyed it!

[Darren]

Johnny and I with you in AM; given we won’t really be eating pre-hunt, what’s meet up time? Driving in

[Rick]

Johnny and I with you in AM; given we won’t really be eating pre-hunt, what’s meet up time? Driving in

We're easing out for the marsh around 5:45, so some time before that to get your feet on the ground. See you then.

Oh, don't forget to bring the ducks.

[Darren]

Johnny and I with you in AM; given we won’t really be eating pre-hunt, what’s meet up time? Driving in

We're easing out for the marsh around 5:45, so some time before that to get your feet on the ground. See you then.

Oh, don't forget to bring the ducks.

Down by the neighborhood pond scooping up a few now. See you then

[Rick]

Date: 12/28/20 Mon

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy to partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: Southerly light

Temperature: cool

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: One of our slowest days to date, which is saying something.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Pretty good until someone else would shoot and screw our pooch.

Hunters: 2, Darren and Johnny

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning for the bug.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Slooooow

Kudos: Darren made a triple on green-wings with witnesses.

Birds By Species: 3 gw teal and 2 mallards

[Duck Engr]

Kudos: Darren made a triple on green-wings with witnesses.

Hot dawg good work!

[Ericdc]

It's disheartening to me to hear how poor the duck hunting in south Louisiana has been lately, even in the prime locations.

I don't know where the green winged teal and gadwall are. We've killed very few at my place in northeast part of state. Mallards have been our most consistent bird, and while that is cool for some, it's weird to me not starting the morning with a good teal flight. We still have a lot of season left up here, I just hope they show up, I miss them.


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[Rick]

Date: 12/29/20 Tue

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE light to moderate

Temperature: cool

Moon phase: FULL

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Same as yesterday: dead.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Much better than ours.

Hunters: 2, Bill, first time duck hunter, and ?, "veteran" duck hunter

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): easy morning

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: We were playing a much slower game than the birds were. And crowd control. And I broke and shot first to avoid a scratch after the first two go-rounds.

Kudos: Pleasant company.

Birds By Species: 2 shovellers

[Duck Engr]

Ooof. Darren killed all of the ducks.

[Rick]

Ooof. Darren killed all of the ducks.

I started to write "Stranger things have happened." but...

[Rick]

Date: 12/30 Wed

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy low and high w/shear

Wind Direction and Velocity: southerly moderate to strong

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: full

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: The most (only?) significant apparently migratory flight seen this season, but too high to break or even ID for the most part.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: My loudest Deceiver didn't do a whole lot more to break the flight than Doc's infamous shaker call, and when it did, someone somewhere would nearly invariably bang them out before they got where we needed them.

Hunters: 1, Doug's diabetes doctor who's hunted with the camp for 20 or so years, but somehow never before with me.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Couldn't find a gray I had dropping but didn't follow all the way down before moving to others. (One of which led a long track.) May have gotten its act together and flown off. May have just been sharper than the bug and I. Well, certainly sharper than me.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Just the incessant rattling of that damn horse dick "call". Had heard a lot about it over the seasons, but was something I had to hear all morning for myself to fully appreciate.

Kudos: Doc's a wonderful fellow of Middle Eastern decent who loves trying as much as anyone I've ever met.

Birds By Species: 2 gadwall, 1 gw teal, 1 mallard, 2 shovellers and 1 wigeon

Photo Ops: 1/3 of an uncertain triple:

004a.jpg

[Deltaman]

"Curses: Just the incessant rattling of that damn horse dick "call". Had heard a lot about it over the seasons, but was something I had to hear all morning for myself to fully appreciate."

Making me spit coffee this morning Rick
Extra-strength Excedrin morning

[Rick]

Date: 12/31 Thur

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE moderate to strong

Temperature: t-shirt

Moon phase: still big

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Had another good flight from the north for the first hour or so.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Had better luck breaking birds out and down but not much luck getting them to put up with our crowd control issues or hold still.

Hunters: 2, father and grown son, Jim and David, who've made a teal hunt with each of the past several years.

Guns: David bought his dad a new Beretta for his retirement.

Malfunctions: Some troubles finding the new gun's forward safety.

Dog(s): We flat wore the bug out working fly-off crips and ghost birds that may, or may/probably not, have gone down.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Crowd control was an incredible mess and I spent way the hey too much prime time chasing chipped birds with the boat to get Marsh in their neighborhood.

Kudos: Super nice folks who were mighty excited by it all.

Birds By Species: 2 gadwall, 1 gw teal, 2 mallards, 1 pintail and 6 shovellers

Photo Ops:

Lagniappe: Funny how often I find myself begrudging parties the ops "wasted" on them before coming around to the fact that it's a darn fine thing such folks had such chances.

[Rick]

"Curses: Just the incessant rattling of that damn horse dick "call". Had heard a lot about it over the seasons, but was something I had to hear all morning for myself to fully appreciate."

Making me spit coffee this morning Rick
Extra-strength Excedrin morning

Some years back, I cut a trail to and made a sweet little blind in a spot mallards and mottleds really liked and told no one about, other than collectors looking for mottleds and guests who'd become special to me. It was wonderful...right up until the afternoon when I walked in with a collector and found my blind half destroyed and Doc's horse dick in the wreckage. Doug, being Doug, denied culpability, but Doc fessed up that an earlier beneficiary had ratted me out, and Doug had sent he and another guide to hunt it.

I rewarded his honesty with the return of his horse dick, but regretted doing so yesterday.

[Deltaman]

"Curses: Just the incessant rattling of that damn horse dick "call". Had heard a lot about it over the seasons, but was something I had to hear all morning for myself to fully appreciate."

Making me spit coffee this morning Rick
Extra-strength Excedrin morning

Some years back, I cut a trail to and made a sweet little blind in a spot mallards and mottleds really liked and told no one about, other than collectors looking for mottleds and guests who'd become special to me. It was wonderful...right up until the afternoon when I walked in with a collector and found my blind half destroyed and Doc's horse dick in the wreckage. Doug, being Doug, denied culpability, but Doc fessed up that an earlier beneficiary had ratted me out, and Doug had sent he and another guide to hunt it.

I rewarded his honesty with the return of his horse dick, but regretted doing so yesterday.

Tough bone to swallow, and from the home team no less

[Rick]

Speaking of tough to swallow: I just added today's bag to the tally sheet and see that spoons have pulled ahead of everything else this split...

[Ericdc]

Speaking of tough to swallow: I just added today's bag to the tally sheet and see that spoons have pulled ahead of everything else this split...

I have not shot at one this year...


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[Rick]

Walk proud, T-boy, walk proud.

[Ericdc]

Walk proud, T-boy, walk proud.

Wasn't a brag, just a strange anomaly for a field hunter like myself. Would have gladly taken them this year.

Nobody killing green wings in our area either.


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[Rick]

Wasn't a brag...

Didn't take it as such. Was just referencing an old joke.

[Rick]

Date: 1/1/21 Fri

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: whipping WNW

Temperature: chilly in the wind

Moon phase: big

Special Notes: Tornado warnings and high winds last night.

Waterfowl Activity: Went from a strong flight yesterday to no flight this morning.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: We were a mess, so God bless a couple extra naive ones.

Hunters: 1 1/2, step niece, Allie, and her six-yr-old son, Deacon

Guns: Beretta something

Malfunctions: couldn't figure out how to release its bolt - so she shot mine and I shot the blind's spare 870

Dog(s): Super easy morning.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Just the lack of (weather-worn?) game.

Kudos: Had a fine visit, worked on Deacon's calling and Allie shot her first duck - in the air, no less.

Birds By Species: 1 gadwall and 1 scaup

Photo Ops: The bug with scratch insurance I finally shot after waiting on our new hunter as long as I dared on a dead morning:

007a.jpg

Our gang with said gray (note the grass camo Allie tied in her hair to hide her black ensemble):

020a.jpg

Madonna and dogris, her first:

043a.jpg

Lagniappe: Back at the landing, Deacon told his mom that he wants to work with Uncle Rick when he grows up, then..."Wait, will he still be alive?"

Have some bad news for both of us, but didn't share it.

[Duck Engr]

Out of the mouths of babes...

[Rick]

Unfiltered.

[Bud]

Awesome compliment, none the less, from the little guy.

A place you shared with me eons ago will always be one of my favorite experiences, watching the two groups of 60 to 80 teal feed in the wind. They would hopscotch over each other from one end of the "still green" rice to the other, fly up into the wind and make an awesome turn, fly low to the other end down just a bit farther, then turn back into the wind to light and start over. Think the wind was ten to twelve knots. I let the mottled get past me watching the show I had never seen before....and will never forget.

[Rick]

You were the beneficiary of not letting Doug know about that little unofficial refuge. There were actually seven blinds on that half-section farm, and I might have told him four were boogered beyond use.

[Bud]

Another guide that close would have been too tight, imo. Hope you found the "thank you very much" in that post. You know it was the right thing to not talk about. Was able to listen to the whole show of your calling the two specks from over my head to the guns of my two visitors. That was both of their first specks. Don't ever think I haven't been grateful all these years.

One of those two guys almost blew my head off with his ten gauge. Ruined my hearing. Knocked me off my bucket with the muzzle blast on the side of my face. Almost left him there. Lost a friend and my hearing. Some people just do stupid things.

Back on subject, Allie looks quite the happy one after clobbering that dos gris.

[Rick]

Date: 1/2/21 Sat

Time: morning

Location: mudhole

Cloud Cover: cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: NW moderate

Temperature: seemed to get appreciably colder later in the morning

Moon phase:

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Not at all what I'd hoped.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Tough to get our few ops out front with the wind direction bringing them dead over the blind.

Hunters: 2, father and son, Robert and Leighton, who are much more deer than duck hunters

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh surprised me by being able to spear a second sprig diving in the boat run with another such in his mouth.

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Doug sold BBBs to guys needing a lot more chances to win than that.

Kudos: Super nice guys still managed a good time.

Birds By Species: 1 bw teal, 2 gw teal and 3 pintails

Photo Ops: A dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta do, so Marsh climbed ashore and paused for the cause after a mighty long wait between retrieves:

007a.jpg

And more of a hero shot:

011a.jpg

Had to give him a lift to the area of a distant unseen fall when we finally filled out (on pintails) and garnered "high blind" (a bad thing in today's case):

039a.jpg