Season Log 2024-2025

[Ducaholic]

Good to see the uptick with the weather

[Rick]

Date: 1/2 Thur

Time: morning

Location: #3, north blind and finally Byron's #4

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: East moderate

Temperature: 40s

Moon phase: sliver

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Typically for east winds poor at my blind with but dribs and drabs of this and that before we decided to try for black-bellies, fist at the oddy barren thereof north blind and then at Byrons too late in the hunt to fill on they or other ducks.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: When we'd hide, much better than our shooting.

Hunters: 2, Andrew and Steve

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call tracked a chipped pintail through flooded curly indigos (very thin cover) but lost it in the open water beyond.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Nice guys who'd hunted with Byron last year and admitted being told "You're shooting air."

Kudos: Still enjoyed a pleasant morning.

Birds By Species: 5 black-bellies, 1 gadwall, 3 green-wings, 1 pintail, 1 wigeon, 1 ringneck, 2 shovellers and 2 specks

[13051305]

I liked the description of: "you are shooting air'.
The older I get the more air I shoot!

[Rick]

Byron's pretty straight forward with his hunters.

[Rick]

Date: 1/3/25 Fri

Time: morning

Location: #3

Cloud Cover: heavy but eventually clearing

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE moderate

Temperature: mid 50s

Moon phase: 17% waxing

Special Notes: Such a dark boat ride out i thought i was losing my night vision to age, then learned the younger/smarter guys were using lights.

Waterfowl Activity: Blew our two gray chances and other's shooting bumped a pair of mottleds I had a handle on - and that was it for big ducks. Saw a few big balls of green-wings working over much of the marsh, but only had a few lost teal and jacks come by. Were, however, enough black-bellies working within hearing to eventually fill.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: The very few big ducks seen tried to work, big balls of teal didn't care how I tried to gain their attention, and black-bellies worked we'll after their initial fly-over from the rice (that generally paid my best efforts no mind).

Hunters: 2, Andrew again and Cole, who shot somewhat better

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Easy morning.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Considering yesterday's adventure, I ain't kickin'.

Kudos: Nice guys got their limits.

Birds By Species: 13 black-bellies, 1 green-wing and 4 ringnecks

[Rick]

Date: 1/4 Sat

Time: morning

Location: #3 and Neil's

Cloud Cover: cloudy to partly and back

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE to E moderate

Temperature: mid 50s

Moon phase: waxing 28%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: No black-bellies at my blind, and my guys had little chance of hitting anything else, so we moved to Neil's blind for them after he filled early.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Far and away better than ours.

Hunters: 2, super nice father, Robert, who plainly hadn't hunted much and 19yr old son, Beau, badly hungover and on his first hunt

Guns: Beau was using an O/U his dad thought would be easy for him to operate...

Malfunctions: ...it was not. Beau very often didn't open it far enough to reset the firing mechanism between ops, and when it did go off it was poorly shouldered and hurt him. Tried to get him to shoot my SA or trade for his dad's be he thought it would be too complicated for him to learn to run two guns on the same hunt. So Robert ended up reloading the O/U between rounds.

Dog(s): Call had a better morning than the rest of us.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Just a very trying morning.

Kudos: Thank the red gods for squealers.

Birds By Species: 12 black-bellies, 1 blue-wing, 1 pintail, 1 ringneck, and 3 shovellers

[13051305]

Rick you have the patience of Jobe.
I didn't think it was possible to miss operate an O/U.

[Rick]

I didn't think it was possible to miss operate an O/U.

Wish they were banned. Can't see one without thinking of an old guiding buddy saying, "When I saw a double-barrel come out the case, I knew we were screwed." And I've seen little reason to argue his point. Sure, their owners love them, but most assholes' parents love them, too.

[Rick]

Date: 1/5/25 Sun

Time: morning

Location: #3 and north blind

Cloud Cover: partly all morning

Wind Direction and Velocity: mostly moderate to strong SE to S

Temperature: warm

Moon phase:

Special Notes: last morning of second split

Waterfowl Activity: Ran off our only big duck ops by not hiding: a mallard and pair of grays at my blind but had a few little ones trip up before moving to north blind for black-bellies which were thick when we got there but didn't return, presumably happier where they went than fighting the wind. Then an eagle put up a bazillion or so mostly black-bellies and teal from an inaccessible portion of the marsh to our east and saved our bacon.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Most everything tried to get in when we'd at least bow to their approach.

Hunters: 2, John and his nephew, Tilton who'd hunted with me a while back and played phone math games with his buddy during a pretty good shoot.

Guns:

Malfunctions: John was shooting an old HK import Benelli M-90 that's solder on the the barrel attachment to magazine tube ring failed, and he never seemed to get much of a handle on my smaller Montefeltro 20.

Dog(s): Impressed the fans and wore himself out on runaway black-bellies

Special Equipment: sos

Curses: Just that nothing was moving ahead of the front or on the SE "teal" wind.

Kudos: Finally reached the magic number 18 and got Tilton back to the camp for Peanut's famous fried pork chops.

Birds By Species: 11 black-bellies, 2 blue-wings, 2 green-wings, 1 ringneck and 2 shovellers

[DComeaux]

Seems to be a completely different set of characters as what went through Doug's.

[Deltaman]

"Sure, their owners love them, but most assholes' parents love them, too."

Coffee spitter there Rick

[Darren]

Seems to be a completely different set of characters as what went through Doug's.

I've been thinking the same

[Rick]

Seems to be a completely different set of characters as what went through Doug's.

The shooter-to-hunter ratio certainly seems more skewed toward the former at CR, but folks is folks, and there were both pleasant and long mornings at Doug's as well.

[PorkChop]

Your temps don’t seem bad. I still follow Amber Wheeler on FB, who is a weather girl down there now that use to be up here. I could swear she was reporting that you guys were going to be getting sub freezing temperatures down that way this past weekend.

[Rick]

Your temps don’t seem bad. I still follow Amber Wheeler on FB, who is a weather girl down there now that use to be up here. I could swear she was reporting that you guys were going to be getting sub freezing temperatures down that way this past weekend.

Down here in the Southwest corner, it didn't get beyond vest cold until early this morning.

[Rick]

Date: 1/18/15 Sat

Time: morning

Location: #3

Cloud Cover: partly

Wind Direction and Velocity: W moderate

Temperature: warm

Moon phase: waning 80%

Special Notes: 3rd split opener

Waterfowl Activity: lots of squealers, spoons and teal, little of anything else moveing

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Guys didn't want to shoot black-bellies or spoons and teal were usually catching us and not sticking around to be shot. Big ducks nearly all caught us.

Hunters: 2, Jack and Bubba, super nice older guys who hunted a good bit but were handicapped by age.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call had a good morning and made new friends.

Special Equipment: MMM;s wiring is shot, so just the spinners

Curses: just that the shooting wasn't easier for my guys

Kudos: Pleasant morning all the same.

Birds By Species: 2 blue-wings, 11 green-wings, 1 mallard and 1 (mistake) spoon

[Rick]

Date: 1/19/25 Sun

Time: morning

Location: #3

Cloud Cover: partly to clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: rippin' NW

Temperature: 40s

Moon phase: Big enough that one of my guys thought its reflection was a light on the front of my blind.

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: The squealers and spoons they didn't want to shoot were, of course, what we saw the most of. Saw quite a few pintails that were too smart to come to a fellow who wouldn't hide as well as a few mallards of like mind, but ours was the "big" mallard kill: meaning they ain't here yet.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Much better than ours.

Hunters: 2, Jack again and Nick who was younger but didn't shoot as well.

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call hunted with a vest for the first time and balked at his first send but was OK with it after the first easy duck retrieve. Snagged both a tipped green-wing and a tipped gray out of the canouche.

Special Equipment: Two spinners that cost a gray duck op, when I thought they were off but weren't..

Curses: Poor Jack's no better at hearing (or listening?) or hiding than yesterday, and we had a little go-round over his coming up early on some mallards that were fighting the wind to get in.

Kudos: God got him shortly after when he did it again and killed one of the spoons they wanted to avoid, rather than waiting for my "go ahead". But a fine time was still had by all.

Birds By Species: 1 gadwall, 6 green-wings, 3 mallards, 1 pintail, 4 ringnecks, 1 shoveller and 2 wigeon

[Darren]

Nice hunt! People just can't stand to listen to the guy that just wants them to kill everything possible.....

[Rick]

Sometimes being the only one who seems to be trying does get...well, pretty trying.

[Duck Engr]

Won’t say I know your exact troubles with that but I can at least relate to a couple seasons back. I was hunting with 2 of my buddies opening weekend. I’d been scouting for 2 days doing a whole lot of walking and not a lot of finding. We hunted the first day and did ok. Before dark, I went to scout again while the other two stayed at the cabin we’d rented on the river. Only thing I asked of them was to step out on the back porch watch for ducks. Got back to discover football had distracted them and they didn’t even get that part done… I was souuuuuur.

[DComeaux]

Good strap of ducks.

[Deltaman]

Solid hunts Rick!
Thanks for sharing, and know that it being so close to the season's end, your patience string on those type of hunts has got to be close to a knot......or fray

[Rick]

Date: 1/20/25 Mon

Time: morning

Location: #3

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: ENE strong

Temperature: upper 20s

Moon phase: waning 63%

Special Notes:

Waterfowl Activity: Still no apparent flight birds and much the same mix as it's been. Except easterly wind kept the squealers out of hailing range.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Highlight for me was talking a nervous flight of 5 bull sprigs' into finishing by purring - albeit only to have one of my guys whack a jack while they were on final. Shades of a day earlier this season when another did the same in front of a little bunch of finishing specks - grrr... Also switched MVPs back to the one Butch worked over and believe I'll stick with it.

Hunters: 2, Brandon and ?

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call caught two of our mallards he tracked way the hey back in the grass, but was balky about taking direction to other birds.

Special Equipment: 2 spinners often off

Curses: nothing serious

Kudos: Didn't see many mallards, but didn't run what I worked off and killed multiple birds on two of our three chances.

Birds By Species: 1 gadwall, 1 green-wing, 6 mallards, 4 ringnecks and 5 shovellers

[jrock75]

Nice bags for the weekend!

[Rick]

Date: 1/21 Tue

Time: Morning

Location: #3

Cloud Cover: blizzard

Wind Direction and Velocity: whipping NNE

Temperature: 20-something

Moon phase:

Special Notes: Crossing the Mermentau River bridge and the rest of the drive to the camp was an adventure in this snow plowless land where salt is just a seasoning.

Waterfowl Activity: Didn't see many big ducks, just black-bellies, teal and jacks, but they could have been up there beyond our limited visibility. Know the camp shot more pintails than mallards.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Most everything seemed to want a place to sit it out.

Hunters: 2, Will and Chad

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): dogs stayed home

Special Equipment: 2 spinners that likely helped more than half sunk, snow covered decoys

Curses: Guys called it before we filled.

Kudos: Guys called it before we filled.

Birds By Species: 5 black-bellies, 2 green-wings, 1 pintail (lost another that was crippled and beat me to the bank), 4 ringnecks and 2 shovellers

Photo Ops: Bewildered black-bellies were in the camp yard when I got there:

thumbnail_PXL_20250121_120907497.jpg

View from the blind when the snow died down enough to get a shot:

thumbnail_PXL_20250121_140409662.jpg

Lagniappe: Had forgotten how much wind-driven snow burns the eyes when driving a boat into it.

[DComeaux]

I was wondering if you had spent the night at the camp. The drive in tomorrow morning may be a bit trickier over the mermentau.

[Rick]

I'm thinking "trickier" is a polite way of saying "stupid," even though I'm driving a (borrowed) heavy 4wd. Might just mean I slide down the slope faster. Surviving that, there will still be the small matter of not getting ice-bound somewhere out in the marsh...

But the boss hasn't called it off.

[jrock75]

Great day for an afternoon hunt

[PorkChop]

I was going to mention the other day about wearing ski goggles when driving the boat. I learned real quick in AK it was a must do! I still wear them now even at work when the wind blows the snow .

[Rick]

I was going to mention the other day about wearing ski goggles when driving the boat. I learned real quick in AK it was a must do! I still wear them now even at work when the wind blows the snow .

I've worn shop goggles against the cold when running an outboard and had the safety glasses I'll sometime use driving our little mudboats when the bugs are bad under my seat, but feared they'd either fog of clog. Mid teens this morning and doesn't feel nearly as cold now that the wind's let up. Just not looking forward to unplowed or salted roads and a tall bridge with a fair bit of sideways bank on one end. They'll sand it for freezes, but that won't be meaningful if no one's run a grader or such over it. Maybe not then.

Guess "we'll see..."