Season

[Ericdc]

Borrowing Rick's template as always


Date: November 22, 2025 east zone opening day

Time: left at 9:20

Location: the 86 pit

Cloud Cover: partly to clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: light W to SW becoming 5-7 out of SW for last hour or so. Thankfully it never died.

Temperature: mid 60's (felt very hot down in pit) warmest opener I can remember for a while.

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes: we had good preseason prep which allowed us to show up, put out decoys and hunt. This year we are using 2 dozen new dakota mallards, 1 dozen dakota pintails, and 4 wigeon and 6 pintails of mine for the duck spread. Along with 15 FB speck and blue goose decoys. We are picking them up each hunt.

Waterfowl Activity: a lot of spoons on our field for last 2 weeks and could hear them before LST. We chipped away at them all morning. Didn't see much else outside a few singles or small groups of big ducks. No geese using immediate area but did see some traffic once morning passed on.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: typical opening day skittish birds. Speck worked the best out of anything we shot. Hope the teal settle down.

Hunters: Martin, Hutton, and I.

Guns: Martin brought his 10 gauge and I enjoyed the show.

Malfunctions: none

Dog(s): none

Special Equipment: 2 mojos on remote

Kudos: we shot pretty well outside the teal. Good front coming next week and plan to hunt the big north wind Wednesday and enjoy needing to wear some fleece.

curses: teal didn't decoy well or we would have gotten closer to our 18.

Birds By Species: (all hens except the gadwall)
8 shovelers
1 gadwall
1 wigeon
1 green winged teal
1 blue winged teal
1 speck

Photo Ops:







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[Darren]

Nice one to start !

[Ericdc]

Catchup post:

Sunday morning Hutton had a great solo hunt yielding 4 green winged teal and 2 shovelers. Reported lots of birds.

Nobody hunted Monday or Tuesday.

Yesterday 3 of us went with high hopes under clear skies and perfect north winds, but the teal and spoons had moved out and were not really replaced with anything new from what I could see. Saw a few more mallards and gadwall but they were headed north on mission.

Decent speck flight but was only able to get 1 single to do it. Harder to break birds out of big groups. (50-200).

Going to go back Saturday in hopes that the south wind and approaching cold front will bring some birds.

Looking at possible trip up early next week once forecast firms up.




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[Ericdc]

Date: November 29, 2025

Time: left at 9:20 during a good break in the rain

Location: the 86 pit

Cloud Cover: heavy to high clouds, on and off light rain

Wind Direction and Velocity: calm to light SE to 5-8 or so SE

Temperature: 40's

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes: hunted with a good friend l and his son

Waterfowl Activity: slowest of the year so far

Waterfowl Responsiveness: local ducks not interested, speck worked good for cloudy rainy weather

Hunters:Todd, Andy, and I

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s):

Special Equipment:

Kudos: I have been able to get a speck each hunt so far. Pretty skies early

curses: no bird on a "ducky" day with a blizzard going across the Midwest

Birds By Species:
1 speck





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[Ericdc]

Date: December 2, 2025

Time: left around 11:30

Location: 86 pit

Cloud Cover: heavy to almost partly back to heavy (disappointing because weather said partly to mostly sunny)

Wind Direction and Velocity: 8-12 North

Temperature: upper 30's to low 40's

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes: last hunt of the first split for me. Taking the wife on a long weekend getaway. Will be ready when December 20th gets here. This week can be slow for us with Arkansas closed.

Waterfowl Activity: quite a few ducks buzzing early then died they picked up a little. Geese got going and stayed going

Waterfowl Responsiveness: blue winged teal came pretty. Big big wave of green wings did decent.

Hunters: Hutton, Austin, and I

Guns:

Malfunctions: Hutton was late and may have missed up an early speck op

Dog(s):

Special Equipment: we put the 2 mojos out once it lightened up some. Can't really tell if they are helping or hurting. Running them intermittent and turning off once big ducks lock up

Kudos: most green wings I've seen all year (came later in morning from south)

curses: all the green wings came in 1 huge group (200-300), and specks were finicky (I'm blaming clouds and huge body of geese to our west)

Birds By Species:
3 blue winged teal
5 green winged teal

Photo Ops:
Why are they here?



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[Ericdc]

We are running about half the birds we used to harvest in first split from 2014 to 2019

Seasons of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 are following the downward population trend.

Nothing else has changed


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[DComeaux]

The farmer wont leave stubble in your fields?

[jrock75]

We are running about half the birds we used to harvest in first split from 2014 to 2019

Seasons of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 are following the downward population trend.

Nothing else has changed


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Knowing how good that farm was back in the day it is hard to see how you are now faring. During the heyday in the late 90's there was a blind there that shot limits every single day of one season.

[Ericdc]

The farmer wont leave stubble in your fields?

No, but 1 of the best years in this field it was beans. )haven't had stubble since 2019. Guy i know south of us has excellent moist soil and they aren't doing any better than us. Big slick shallow water generally wins out. We have our water level pulled down on 1 side to be able to put realistic FB ducks and geese out in water and off levee and I'm hoping that helps as season wears on.

Our farms loads up pretty good later in morning. I can only assume it's a loafing spot for them.


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[Darren]

All the fields I see at Top Gun and Dave's Bayou seem to just be big slick water floods, very little stubble, if any.

[Ericdc]

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[DComeaux]

NICE!!!!!

[Duck Engr]

Awesome! Way better for the freezer than these stupid ducks anyway.

[Darren]

Good one Eric! congrats

[Deltaman]

Sweet neck shot too!!!!

[Ericdc]

Sweet neck shot too!!!!

Thanks. It was intentional. I've had a lot of success hitting them there and not having to do any tracking. I believe it preserves a lot of meat as well except for some of the neck meat.


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