2016-2017 Season Log

[Rick]

Story I heard was that I ratted myself out as soon as I got out of the truck, and he was cool about it. Our guys are generally very good about what the late Senior Federal Agent, Dave Hall, called "skinny pinches that only serve to turn the public against enforcement".

[Ericdc]

Story I heard was that I ratted myself out as soon as I got out of the truck, and he was cool about it. Our guys are generally very good about what the late Senior Federal Agent, Dave Hall, called "skinny pinches that only serve to turn the public against enforcement".

Some of the guys up here didn't know him I guess.

Sir, which ducks did you shoot on that strap?

Uhhh this one....that one...and that one.


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[Ericdc]

Rick, they are predicting fog up here tomorrow. I'll text to confirm.


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[Rick]

Story I heard was that I ratted myself out as soon as I got out of the truck, and he was cool about it. Our guys are generally very good about what the late Senior Federal Agent, Dave Hall, called "skinny pinches that only serve to turn the public against enforcement".

Some of the guys up here didn't know him I guess.

Sir, which ducks did you shoot on that strap?

Uhhh this one....that one...and that one.

Sounds like Joe Oliveris, who I believe was transferred to Florida where a cancer got him. Lots of stories about him have made it down here, some of which might even be true.

[Rick]

Rick, they are predicting fog up here tomorrow. I'll text to confirm.


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Was cloudy but fog free when I aired the dogs this morning, but I see there's a dense fog advisory here, too. Grrr...

[SpinnerMan]

Story I heard was that I ratted myself out as soon as I got out of the truck, and he was cool about it. Our guys are generally very good about what the late Senior Federal Agent, Dave Hall, called "skinny pinches that only serve to turn the public against enforcement".

I heard they were fining people where we hunted snow geese in Missouri for not having birds separated during the conservation season when there is no limit.

The warden back home where I grew up in PA. I'm actually surprised he hasn't disappeared into a strip pit. He is not liked to say the least. My Dad's cousin has a place on the river. They and their neighbors saw him take of after someone in his boat and he knocked his lower unit off on a ledge. Everybody has a boat and they just watched him float down the river and laugh. What's the saying. They wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.

[Rick]

Date: 1/14

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: Just partly cloudy when we went out, but a fog soon rolled in.

Wind Direction and Velocity: ESE moderate

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: full

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: God bless teal, because that was about all we saw - or could see?

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Peeped away, as usual under such conditions, and it likely helped. Know Matt in the back blind said he tried it this morning and also filled out. Would think I'd given him the key to Ft. Knox.

Hunters: 2, father and grown son, Martin and Steve

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh and I bumped heads over not being able to know him off ducks on the pond to go for a long chipped bird - which he fortunately remembered and recovered anyway.

Special Equipment: SOS (only I pulled the flamingo, in case this crew did poorly and failed to see the humor in it.

Curses: Aside from Marsh's disobedience (which is his pee-poor "trainer's" fault), I'm not complaining about a thing.

Kudos: Worked out a lot better than it might have, given the givens, for nice folks.

Birds By Species: 2 bw teal, 1 gadwall, 12 gw teal, 2 mallards and 1 ringneck

[DComeaux]

Very nice!

[Rick]

Date: 1/15

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: fog again

Wind Direction and Velocity: easterly moderate

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: waning 87%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Didn't seem fast in the fog, but we finished pretty fast, so it must have been.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Whistled to the fog with good result.

Hunters: 2, father, Martin, again with other grown son, Todd

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh had a good morning to include two sweet hunt-em-ups with long tracks and chases.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: None at all.

Kudos: Blessed with another nice day for nice folks.

Birds By Species: 1 bw teal, 2 gadwall, 7 gw teal, 3 mallards, 4 ringnecks and 1 shoveler

Photo Ops: Todd and Martin:


Martin was a Chessie guy and asked for this one for his wife to see Marsh:


This doesn't begin to tell the story of the chase that took place in the background, but had the infamous marsh flamingo in the foreground, and I wanted something of it before what may be its last mission in a pond on neighboring Cherry Ridge:

[DComeaux]

I really like that flamingo thing...

[Rick]

I really like that flamingo thing...

I'm "guessing" there was a sighting at Cherry Ridge this morning:




Just a guess...

[Rick]

Date: 1/16

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: partly cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE moderate

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: waning 80%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: No teal seen, other than a couple bluewings that knew exactly how things could go at the Mudhole and burned by wide. Some, mostly HIGH, big ducks headed south.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Played hob breaking the big ducks, but muffed/chipped chances at a pair each of plainly "local" mallards and mottleds tricked into coming over. Grrr...

Hunters: 2, Brooks (who always seems to bring poor flights with him on annual trip and new man, Gordon.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: "Flight" was such that ours was the big hunt.

Kudos: Nice fellows and what we killed was shot front and center pretty as can be.

Birds By Species: 2 gadwall, 4 mallards and 1 ringneck

[Darren]

The looks that flamingo got at the CR blind ......

Wonder what the day's guests thought

[Ducaholic]

Great run you are on Rick. How are the season totals stacking up compared to other years that you have kept a log at the MH?

[Rick]

Wonder what the day's guests thought

That worry is what landed it on the guide's end, where it ought to be caught fairly quickly, rather than where only they would see and ask about it. Can be some mighty stuffy folks through that camp, and it might not have seemed as funny on such a slow morning as on a better one.

Did hear some shooting from their area, though. Might have outlawed a flamingo...

[Rick]

Great run you are on Rick. How are the season totals stacking up compared to other years that you have kept a log at the MH?

Had wondered about that myself and tallied the numbers just yesterday. The previous nine seasons' average has run just over 1,100 birds, September teal included, and we're at 1084 after this morning. So it will be about as average as can be, whether we kill another bird or not.

[Ducaholic]

Great run you are on Rick. How are the season totals stacking up compared to other years that you have kept a log at the MH?

Had wondered about that myself and tallied the numbers just yesterday. The previous nine seasons' average has run just over 1,100 birds, September teal included, and we're at 1084 after this morning. So it will be about as average as can be, whether we kill another bird or not.

Not a darn thing wrong with consistency at that level.

[Rick]

...we're at 1084 after this morning.

Stumbled onto a two speck error, so it's 1086, by golly. Specks are way too rare for us these days to overlook.

[Rick]

Date: 1/17

Time: morning

Location: Mudhole

Cloud Cover: mostly dense fog

Wind Direction and Velocity: SE nil to moderate - again

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: 70% waning

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Precious little seen in the marsh or the neighbors, judging by their lack of shooting, too.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Only broke one of the three teal flights seen zipping over through the fog and they surprised us by returning from water they usually follow behind us. Broke a mallard from one of the two bunches of them seen and worked it pretty. Got caught by the most of his group and the other one, as well as some grays that still got chipped.

Hunters: 2, Brooks and Gordon again

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Marsh's looong mark and chase of a tipped greenwing that made it to open water to our north had us celebrating - until a (POed?) gator started popping off where he'd just been and sobered us up. So there'll be no more long retrieves near, much less in, open water this season.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Was so slow that many stories were told, often too loudly and with too much gesturing for the good of our hunt, but I lacked the heart to try and dampen it. And the louder I teal whistled for cover, the louder the stories got.

Kudos: Nice fellows who took a sorry morning well.

Birds By Species: 1 gw teal, 1 mallard and 2 ringnecks

Photo Ops: A rare duck - today:

[Rick]

Certainly for this split, but I think there were one or two about like it in the first split. Was happy just to squeeze past the dreaded scratch.

[Darren]

How'd the other blinds make out? about the same? You've been big blind recently

Also, no "You wouldn't believe what was standing in my pond this morning....." phone calls from the neighbors?

[DComeaux]

Date: 1/17
Dog(s): Marsh's looong mark and chase of a tipped greenwing that made it to open water to our north had us celebrating - until a (POed?) gator started popping off where he'd just been and sobered us up. So there'll be no more long retrieves near, much less in, open water this season.

I'd noticed, and made a comment to Blake on the shake water from Ellie being warm last weekend. I was nervous on one of her loooooong search missions. I got up on the blind seat watching her, thinking it would be such a helpless feeling.

[Rick]

How'd the other blinds make out? about the same? You've been big blind recently

Also, no "You wouldn't believe what was standing in my pond this morning....." phone calls from the neighbors?

Ed was top blind today with 10 or 12 teal and jacks (up from 1 yesterday, I think), Issac's string looked about like mine (up from 1 yesterday), Clyde had three, Nelton two or three and Matt scratched. Hated that for Matt's blind, as he had an elderly regular who's hunted with me forever and had to cancel our scheduled date due to prostate cancer surgery and reschedule what may be his last hunt to a date when I couldn't take him. (This time time I accepted the sweet Model 12 16ga I've been turning down with "Just bring it back next year." Albeit with the proviso that "We'll hunt with her next fall.")

Had our laugh about the flamingo over coffee. Seems they had me busted, as Clark knew I was the only one who would know how to get to Leonard's blind.

[Rick]

Certainly for this split, but I think there were one or two about like it in the first split. Was happy just to squeeze past the dreaded scratch.

Now you have gone and done it,I have been thinking this WHOLE season "he has not scratched one time"

Thought for a good while that this would be it. Maybe in the morning...

[Ericdc]

Certainly for this split, but I think there were one or two about like it in the first split. Was happy just to squeeze past the dreaded scratch.

Now you have gone and done it,I have been thinking this WHOLE season "he has not scratched one time"

Thought for a good while that this would be it. Maybe in the morning...

Closest I've come was on New Year's Eve...cloudy drizzle and nothing moving until a young excited speck came by yodeling so excited to see my goose decoys.


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[Rick]

Date: 1/17
Dog(s): Marsh's looong mark and chase of a tipped greenwing that made it to open water to our north had us celebrating - until a (POed?) gator started popping off where he'd just been and sobered us up. So there'll be no more long retrieves near, much less in, open water this season.

I'd noticed, and made a comment to Blake on the shake water from Ellie being warm last weekend. I was nervous on one of her loooooong search missions. I got up on the blind seat watching her, thinking it would be such a helpless feeling.

Saw a show a couple days ago where they were diving with crocodiles that wouldn't feed when the water was under 66 degrees, which jives with something I'd read some time back from Texas Parks and Wildlife about alligators not feeding once water temps hit the low 60s. Don't know what our water is now, just that I didn't send him for a long, tipped gray he'd marked across one of the big ponds to our south after the teal gator's wake-up call. He'll not be going far near deep water without the boat and armed guard from here on out.