2017 Season

[DukMan]

Well the water is down and the drainage canal bordering my property is being conveniently dredged this week... worst timing ever!

So I decided to take Rusty out for his first hunt and give him a ton of retrieves... so doves and pigeons it was... and an opening day slaughterfest ensued... after a little hesitation and getting used to warm, flopping, feather covered retrieves Rusty's training kicked in and he made some real nice retrieves... even find two I dropped in the thick stuff! I couldn't be more tickled since I trained him myself... we got room to grow but man it was fun.

We even shot a racer... I have to assume that's more rare than a banded waterfowl... but some poor guy won't get his bird home...although it was tied up with a group of silo-rats so I doubt it was much of a racer to begin with...







This was a good way to scratch the itch! 58 degrees, 10 mph west wind... saw 30+ teal fly over real early... didn't go for teal because it didn't open until 9am so no point... maybe Monday since I work all weekend...

Good things to come!




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[Rick]

Sweet. The banded pigeon had already "crashed" in its owner's eyes and was, as you've guessed, likely worthless to him. Know that when they've crashed with my birds and I've hunted down their owners, they had no further use for them. "Keep it or kill it" has been their response.

[DukMan]

Went out this morning after work...and the weather wasn't right. 56 degrees, foggy, no wind, and it's been so damn dry lately we barely have water. No teal seen, however I had local mallards and woodies circling and landing in the decoys 10 yards away and managed to pull in a lone honker. After 3 hours it was starting to get hot and turned into a bluebird day so we went across to the neighbors for some doves and pigeons and knocked down 8 more doves and a pigeon before we had to take off...





Took Mason out with me today and he didn't know what to do with that Canadian... he picked it up spit it out, pulled a few feathers, and tossed it around a bit before I got out there to teach him where to grab and hold it and he carried it back to the blind. Otherwise he made some good retrieves on doves later on and will be ready for NoDak in a month!

[Rick]

Now you know how your blind looks to the birds, but it does look like you could use some of our water.

[DukMan]

Went out yesterday afternoon and managed to tie into a couple geese... I had a flock of six put their feet down in the decoys... shot a triple then reloaded for one dumb one that decided to come back around... I didn't take the dogs with me this time due to time constraints...



I walked to the back of my property where they were cutting trees and "clearing" out the drainage canal and was upset to see they had been dropping trees onto my side of the canal and took out one of my newly placed wood duck houses and just left it there broken without the courtesy of a call.

I'll be following up on this at the next drainage district meeting!




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[Rick]

Don't know about your situation, but in ours developing stroke with the drainage board is a very good thing. Squeaky wheels might get greased, but they're not apt to get favors...

[aunt betty]

Salvage what you can on the duk box, put it back up, and feel good about it.
Fighting the county drainage district or whatever over something that small is probably not worth the effort or the possible negative attention you could get.

[DComeaux]

The parish did a drive by it seems, spraying the ditches this past week and killed a big swath of my grass in my yard along two road sides. Myself and others have complained about this in the past and some have put up DO NOT SPRAY THIS DITCH signs.

[DukMan]

Well I'm getting nervous the Southern Opener is the 30th and my land is bone dry with no rain in the forecast. We've gone from 12+ feet of water to drought. My neighbor is holding a bit of water on his property and I might actually hunt opening morning over there. I feel almost sick thinking about the time I've put into my property and not even going to hunt it opening day.

I'll be heading up North tomorrow and hunting the river for some wood ducks, I've heard there's been good flights of woodies this year up there so I'm sure I'll pull at least a 3 duck limit of woodies out of the air. Mainly focused on getting the dogs some water retrieves with current. We'll see how it goes... keep ya posted.

[Rick]

Good luck with it.

[aunt betty]

It's dry down here too. You know how a drought ends right?
Have a feeling we'll get our water it's just a matter of when and how much too much.
If it gets crazy deep here I know exactly where to go and what to do. It only happens once every 20-25 years tho.
It's going to get in one of them patterns where it storms every three or four days eventually...get ready.

[DukMan]

Well we made it up North to the wood duck slough I wasn't able to get there for the opener because of work but we got there none the less. I took my boy Rusty for his 1st official duck hunt and he was a stud. He made 4 nice retrieves and we did what we could with the few birds we saw...

I was told there had been other people in my slough opening weekend and apparently they had a good shoot according to the guy who watches the slough for me as apparently it sounded like WWIII.

We were able to tie into some mallards and then a few woodies survived the barrage of opening day fire that met their demise. This is my soap box here but I still think it's bogus that WI allows 4 mallards of which only one can be a hen. I don't condone targeting hens but during our season there are many eclipse drakes and lost opportunities because people are hesitant to pull the trigger... neither of my drakes had good color and to be honest the 2nd one I thought was a hen until I saw it up close... rant over

Day one was warm... saw a good amount of mallards pass up shots on a flock of 10 or so... just couldn't pick out a drake... took one out of a pair and a second out of a group of 3... nothing else flying in the morning ... went out at night and connected on one drake woodie

Day two... FOG... saw only a pair of woodies all morning killed the drake...







Day 2



I went out and scouted my Southern opener spot for Saturday and kicked up 30+ BW teal and 10-15 Mallards... Should be a good opening morning!


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[Rick]

We were able to tie into some mallards and then a few woodies survived the barrage of opening day fire that met their demise. This is my soap box here but I still think it's bogus that WI allows 4 mallards of which only one can be a hen. I don't condone targeting hens but during our season there are many eclipse drakes and lost opportunities because people are hesitant to pull the trigger... neither of my drakes had good color and to be honest the 2nd one I thought was a hen until I saw it up close... rant over

I'm virtually certain the mallard hen limit is federally mandated but had no idea anyone in this country was allowed to shoot anything but teal and woodies in September. Can see how ID would be problematic then.

[aunt betty]

Illinois lets you shoot two hen mallards a day.
Arkansas does too.
Indiana allows two hens per day.
Missouri allows two hens per day.
Minnesota allows two hens per day.
It is starting to look like Wisconsin is alone with the one-hen limit per day.

The wisconsin season opens in September. Has several zones with different openers like Illinois.
One zone actually has a split!

I wish my state would pick up on that and end the Thanksgiving deer/duck opener dilemma in the south by closing waterfowl (entire state) for the week of Thanksgiving. That way the shotgun deer hunters that hunt ducks don't have to choose which to do.
If we had two splits would be even better. Everybody wins!

[Rick]

I must of posted that in my sleep.

[DukMan]

Went out for the Southern opener and tied into the birds... weather's been cooling down and birds moved down from getting banged up in the Northern opener last weekend. I've never seen teal like we saw yesterday... hundreds of them. I shot 4 Blue Wings 2 Greenwings. My buddy rounded out the bag with 2 Bluewings, 2 Greenwings and a Hen Mallard.



With the weather cooling down I think you LA boys ought to see an influx of teal moving in...



We had our bag by 830 we moved out cause some guys came and set up 60 yards in front of us 20 mins after shooting hours and we're sky busting birds so we bailed, one bird short.

I'll be working all week this week then heading to NoDak next Monday...hopefully I'll have some limits to post!



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[DukMan]

Forgot to mention we met two of the local game wardens... real nice guys put us through a thorough check and bullshitted for a few minutes before continuing on to the next group... even stopped back later just to shoot the shit..nice to see those guys out there keeping people honest.


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[Rick]

With the weather cooling down I think you LA boys ought to see an influx of teal moving in...

That's a sure thing now that our early teal season's over.

[Deltaman]

"We had our bag by 830 we moved out cause some guys came and set up 60 yards in front of us 20 mins after shooting hours and we're sky busting birds so we bailed, one bird short. "

Dammit man..................steel shot from a 3" shell could hurt at 60 yds.

[SpinnerMan]

This is my soap box here but I still think it's bogus that WI allows 4 mallards of which only one can be a hen. I don't condone targeting hens but during our season there are many eclipse drakes and lost opportunities because people are hesitant to pull the trigger... neither of my drakes had good color and to be honest the 2nd one I thought was a hen until I saw it up close... rant over

Two things.

How much of your mallards are local birds? The biologists should know this. Where I grew up in PA, when I started hunting, it was only a 30 day season and I don't remember the limits, but we always saw mallards when we went hunting. Then came the resident geese, which increased hunting interest and then came the liberal season and bag limits. Now I can drive 40 miles of shoreline and not see a duck. We don't get much migration through there and I think we just wiped out the locals. So your 1 mallard hen in a high pressure state like WI where much of the state is local birds (not sure if it is but if it is), this really could be necessary for much of the eastern part of the state. It looks like it could be reasonable and possibly even excess for the reasons it seems to have been where I grew up.

As far as "targeting hens" of what species? Obviously if a hen and drake come in, nobody shoots the hen first of any species. However, I have no problem with people shooting both. Follow the law, and as long as others do, I don't worry about it. It's one of those pet peeves, because (not you) in my experience, those that preach the loudest are typically full of it. I hunted once with this guy that always talked about not shooting hens. The day I hunted with him was one of the best days of duck hunting, I've had, so it wasn't the normal, that one hen may be your only duck of the week. Yet he didn't pass on a single shot at a hen But he did feel the need to say he didn't normally shoot at hens, but ... Personally, first duck of the day, I don't care. We have a couple, then I probably pass on that single hen, probably. But too each his own As long as it is legal.

[aunt betty]

The limits when you started hunting was a point system where you got to shoot until you got to 100 points.
A hen mallard was 90 points and I'm thinking a drake mallard was 45 points or something where you had to lie and say you shot the hen last when you had two drakes and a hen. GW carried a thermometer to catch the liars.
A pintail was 10 points so if you got into them you were having a blast.
That's all ancient history tho.

Hens taste better so I don't hesitate to shoot them but if you're fool enough to shoot the first bird to light and it's a hen mallard...you just fucked up.

[DukMan]

This is my soap box here but I still think it's bogus that WI allows 4 mallards of which only one can be a hen. I don't condone targeting hens but during our season there are many eclipse drakes and lost opportunities because people are hesitant to pull the trigger... neither of my drakes had good color and to be honest the 2nd one I thought was a hen until I saw it up close... rant over

Two things.

How much of your mallards are local birds? The biologists should know this. Where I grew up in PA, when I started hunting, it was only a 30 day season and I don't remember the limits, but we always saw mallards when we went hunting. Then came the resident geese, which increased hunting interest and then came the liberal season and bag limits. Now I can drive 40 miles of shoreline and not see a duck. We don't get much migration through there and I think we just wiped out the locals. So your 1 mallard hen in a high pressure state like WI where much of the state is local birds (not sure if it is but if it is), this really could be necessary for much of the eastern part of the state. It looks like it could be reasonable and possibly even excess for the reasons it seems to have been where I grew up.

quote]

According to the warden I was talking with the reason we have the one hen limit when every state around us has a two bird limit is predominantly because of public opinion and when surveyed no one wants to admit they shoot hens on paper. My thought is however we're also told we hold a large number of mallard breeding pairs and anyone who knows anything about duck numbers knows harvest have nothing to do with duck numbers. Habitat restoration and decreasing predation on nest will exponentially increase birds on the ground. Studies by Delta, DU, and USFG have all echoed this... so killing one more Susie will not hurt populations and increase shot on opportunities those eclipse drakes in the early dawn...

They all eat the same.

[aunt betty]

Do the predators in Wisconsin also limit their hen mallard intake?

[SpinnerMan]

when surveyed no one wants to admit they shoot hens on paper

Well if nobody shoots them, then they can raise the limit to 10 and it won't matter

[DukMan]

when surveyed no one wants to admit they shoot hens on paper

Well if nobody shoots them, then they can raise the limit to 10 and it won't matter

This logic is beautiful... quite ashamed I didn't think of it myself!

[DukMan]

Do the predators in Wisconsin also limit their hen mallard intake?

Delta Waterfowl has done extensive research on this and increased nesting success exponentially on their test nesting areas by trapping out coons, opossums and other egg snatchers. They determined that just because the habitat is there doesn't mean you'll get good numbers out if there are large numbers of predators. We have all those little bastards here in WI as well, coons, opossums, and skunks... they will all devastate duck nests. We currently have no programs in place trapping predators in refuges or waterfowl productions areas. Would only make sense numbers would go up if predation went down.

I try to self manage my property by trapping nesting predators year round.. every 2-3 weeks I'll bait 5-6 dog proofs and every day after I bait and check the traps I go either 5 for 6 or 6 for 6 usually all coons. As fast as I take them out, more move in.. with numbers like that it's hard to believe a wood duck nest in a tree crotch or mallard nest along the canal would go unnoticed.

[aunt betty]

Down here the waterffowl nests in the doorways to businesses and restaurants. If you only knew the truth about their efforts to conserve...




ha! They gas em.


Couple years back the city of Urbana was in full-blown freak-out mode because of a couple of wild turkeys in town.
They won't say whatever happened to Tom and Bert but they imply heavily that there were relocated....to a dinner table in west-Champaign.

[DukMan]

Well I made it out weds and Thursday with the pups and got a couple... the weather was nice a cool in the morning although it turned into a bluebird day we were able to get into the birds early... no wind either day which made for wary birds not wanting to commit. Only heard 2 other shots all morning so we were in the right spot.


Weds morning I took Rusty out and we got 2 Mallards, 2 Shovelers, a BW Teal.




Thurs was all about the Mallards Mason and I, got a limit (4) Mallards and headed in after that as that's all we were seeing.




Our split starts Monday so I'll be off to NoDak for the week... hopefully we'll smack a bunch out there plus fill my swan permit...


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[DComeaux]

That's some nice hunts. We've got a while to go before it opens here.