Duck Season 2015-2016

[Darren]

Looks ducky - which may show how little I know.

With all the fresh water aquatic veg its about the closest thing to mudhole-like marsh we've got ready access to, and it's seldom hunted. Yesterday ringers, grays and teal among others were piled up all over this surface grass.

Scout mission this afternoon found a few scattered birds over that way, including a sprig that darn near needed a trailer to haul around his lengthy tail. Hoping the stout winds tonight shake things up (and he stays around).

[Rick]

Wind was making the trees whistle when I took the dogs out this morning. Going to make the challenges my new hunters are struggling with all the more "interesting," and I hope won't make your ride in the marsh too much so...

[Darren]

Wind was making the trees whistle when I took the dogs out this morning. Going to make the challenges my new hunters are struggling with all the more "interesting," and I hope won't make your ride in the marsh too much so...

The wind showed, the birds, not so much, again.

[Darren]

Sun. 1/17/2016
SE La public marsh
Justin M., Johnny & I with Harry
Wind N/NE 10-20+, 40's, pt cloudy to clear

Though I'd planned on a change of scene from Saturday's hunt, my afternoon trip found overall more scattered birds in this area than what I'd seen late morning at the alternative location. It was again largely a bust, with very little moving around in the area for first couple of hours. Had one op we should have fired on with some working grays that wouldn't quite finish, got a single gray a little later, then able to scratch down 2 on another non-finishing wad of grays. Unfortunately, the marsh is flooded up like that of a September tropical system and both birds dove on Harry despite his good faith efforts throughout the location we had marked (just across the pond pictured below) and even way down wind of that. Not a feather found, and he never picked up on a scent. Frustrating to have all this water so late in the season, and it's actually plagued us throughout the season such that we hadn't even thought of taking the pushpoles out the boat, muchless actually using them.

1 gray in hand, 2 more crip grays lost to the floods

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Been a few hunts now since the strap came out, grrr. Will try again next weekend, I'm surely not fired up to sneak out for a midweek trip.

Highlight of this weekend was Johnny bringing over a seafood bonanza. He and I spent Saturday evening shucking oysters, grilling them, and pecking away at the crawfish and crabs he brought as well. Also tinkered with a few duck bomb/popper configurations. Hunting may be down but the eating is top notch right now

[Ducaholic]

When all else fails eats and drinks certainly can fill the void...

[Darren]

As we approach the 2nd to last weekend of the East Zone season, this is the first coastal forecast for our hunt area with some teeth to it, something we would get much earlier in the season on a typical year. This ties in to the same factors mentioned in previous post regarding the water levels staying way up all season.

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Typically I'd say this would be great for bringing us birds for the weekend but our hopes are on the floor. We'll give it a shot anyway

[DComeaux]

Typically I'd say this would be great for bringing us birds for the weekend but our hopes are on the floor. We'll give it a shot anyway

Unfortunately, I know this feeling all too well. Migration triggers and or signs that would once spark excitement and anticipation, as of late, have only prompted a lackluster "go and see" attitude out of me. The fire is still there, I can feel it, but it's on a weak pilot at the moment.

Good luck on your hunt's this weekend, and I'll be here waiting to read your reports.

[Darren]

Sat. 1/23/2016
SE La public marsh
Anthony & I with Harry
Wind N/NW 15-25+, temps low 30's to start, clear skies, water finally falling

Anthony found some birds yesterday in this area, and I'd been watching them there on a couple of trips. As is typical for this location historically, they want the middle of this large pond and we wrangled with them all morning trying to get a few close. They certainly showed in numbers so it was a hoot to watch just frustrating to have them be so close and so far. Managed to crip down two grays to no avail, one dove on Harry's open water pursuit and the other winged off a good ways giving it lots of time before we could get to it. Did manage to bag a few other birds and should have had a few more of everything, wind was playing tricks with our shot strings apparently.

3 dosgris, 1 mottled (and 1 train load of grays observed and not taken home)

Tried to capture what we'd been watching take place all morning

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Couldn't quite figure what was keeping them from committing. We went with the big spread for today, with plenty of big numbers working. This location at same time last season was lights out with a big spread, they ate it up. Today they had me wondering how it might have gone with only 5-10 grays out on edge of our range in one bunch, kind of representing the groups that were coming in. Singles were hard to come by, but wads of 20-30 routine. If we try again, will back off on the decoys.

[DComeaux]

It's been a weird year.

[Deltaman]

Sat. 1/23/2016
SE La public marsh
Anthony & I with Harry
Wind N/NW 15-25+, temps low 30's to start, clear skies, water finally falling

Anthony found some birds yesterday in this area, and I'd been watching them there on a couple of trips. As is typical for this location historically, they want the middle of this large pond and we wrangled with them all morning trying to get a few close. They certainly showed in numbers so it was a hoot to watch just frustrating to have them be so close and so far. Managed to crip down two grays to no avail, one dove on Harry's open water pursuit and the other winged off a good ways giving it lots of time before we could get to it. Did manage to bag a few other birds and should have had a few more of everything, wind was playing tricks with our shot strings apparently.

3 dosgris, 1 mottled (and 1 train load of grays observed and not taken home)

Tried to capture what we'd been watching take place all morning

IMG_0681.JPG

Couldn't quite figure what was keeping them from committing. We went with the big spread for today, with plenty of big numbers working. This location at same time last season was lights out with a big spread, they ate it up. Today they had me wondering how it might have gone with only 5-10 grays out on edge of our range in one bunch, kind of representing the groups that were coming in. Singles were hard to come by, but wads of 20-30 routine. If we try again, will back off on the decoys.

We call'em Einsteins here.............damn Grays are harder to decoy here than any other duck I've ever hunted, but since they makes up 95% of the birds we get each year, you've got to figure out how to fool'em. When we hunt in Venice, they will typically dive bomb our decoys. Guess it has to do with the pressure!

[Darren]

The last hunt in Delacroix, you'd swear they're the "dumbest" or most decoy-friendly birds in the marsh. This weekend they're the wisest birds of the marsh. We were even using a large raft of coots which is typically our game-changer. In grand scheme of things, whatever we killed these last couple of weeks is lagniappe, we've piled up our share of their buddies this season. Will crunch numbers after next weekend, hope to add a few more.

[Darren]

Sat. 1/30/2016
SE La Public marsh
Johnny with Harry and I
Wind Zip to maybe 5+ from the SSW, pt cloudy, low to mid 40's to start

Harry and I took a ride yesterday mid-afternoon in our stompin grounds but didn't see a whole lot, most discouragingly no grays whatsoever. We did find a pocket of broken marsh with a fair pile of green wings and also noted a couple of handfuls of mallards in a location they've been favoring in recent trips with no pressure on them. Opted for the teal and indeed got ourselves on a few. It was typical dark and early flight with singles and pairs dropping in on us or burning by. Missed a few in the dark right at LST but managed to down 5 in total before the flight petered out by about 7:00. Little better shooting and we maybe down 8 or so. Lost one crip that made it to the north shoreline I'd thought sure we'd dig up a little later but that turned up empty with too much of a head start given to him and Harry seemed to be thoroughly distracted by a scent trail that led him to a nutria nest of some sort. On way out made a pass elsewhere and found the mallards to again be hangin around so we just might try that tomorrow for kicks.

4 GW teal

Water is finally low enough to warrant a pushpole, and Harry not a fan of the "pond" and it's 2" of water and 2 feet of mud

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Basically saying, please don't send me back out there

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The few teal today had me curious of just how grossly low we are on an average season count for GW teal. Will crunch numbers early in the week to see just how off the pace we were; my guess is waaaayyy off for our local marsh. Strange year

[DComeaux]

Sat. 1/30/2016
Basically saying, please don't send me back out there

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HA! That picture reminds me of a marsh I hunted that would drain quickly after a front with it's strong north winds. We sat way too long on several occasions on these type of days when birds were thick, and we had to fight our way out. It was worth it,though, and we were back out there the next morning to do it all over again. The water would come back up a bit over night if the wind would lay down giving us just enough to float in without too much problem, but when the wind came up later in the morning it would drain out fast leaving us with slush. Did that for 15 years.

[Rick]

That's one of those things that is probably better to have done than to do.

[aunt betty]

It's been a weird year.

Sure has. Killed my "timber ducks" by hunting in the boat lanes.
I sat in that little hole for a week watching them land in the lanes b4 I said "fuck it...who cares what ppl think".

As far as "the fire" goes I still have it but it only gets really roaring when I see a cold front associated with a low pressure system and the low is going right over me. THEN I get frantic about making sure the coffee maker is ready etc.

Learned something about hunting WMA's this year.
Have been trying a new one each year. The first thing you do when you scout a WMA is find the refuge and see if they got ducks. Now that I know where these refuges are I can use the weather radar to look for ducks. They get up at around sunset.

Example: Suppose I'm wanting to see if Ashbaugh has any ducks. Sunset is 5:10 (made up #)
I'd tune into weather channel dot com and get the map on Lake Ashbaugh at around 5:30 and start watching the loop.
If there are ducks in huntable (voo coo) numbers you can see them get up on radar. WOW! That is one of the best hunting tips I have ever gotten EVER! You are welcome.

[DComeaux]

That's one of those things that is probably better to have done than to do.

That's true. My piss and vinegar level is not as high as it once was.

[Darren]

Sun. 1/31/2016 - last day of the 2015-2016 season
SE La public marsh
Johnny & I with Harry
Wind 0-10+ from SE, temps in upper 50's, cloudy

Decided we'd give those mallards a try in an area we'd been seeing them holed up in. Went with small spread of a few mallards only, set in pairs spread far apart, nice blind of Roseau and palmettos. After an hour or so we hadn't even thought about shooting, didn't see a mallard (couple of mottleds and teal only) and said "That's enough of that" and picked it up for the season. No way were we going to wait out a late flight today. Was a little shooting to our west presumably on some divers I've been seeing over that way but other than that very few birds in the area. Made a pass by our teal hole from day before and found it loaded........with pelicans. Not a teal flushed when we buzzed by, so that at least showed we weren't missing something there.

Got the deck boards out of the big blind on the way out and called it a season.

DNS - first scratch of the season on the last day


Tighten up the big blind for the offseason

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[Rick]

Johnny looks OK with it. Perhaps even glad to have it behind him...

[Darren]

Johnny looks OK with it. Perhaps even glad to have it behind him...

Perhaps glad to have both the work of wrestling those decks out (I've usually done on my own and struggled mightily) and a season that crawled to a halt behind us. His busy season is about to crank up in the boat sales industry so time to focus elsewhere.

I'll crunch numbers this week

[Darren]

Crunched the end of season numbers broken down by species below:

Green wing teal 37 (down from 61 last year)
Blue wing teal 37 (24 from early teal season)
Grays 118* (up from 80 last year and 29 in 2013 season)
Mottleds 4
Spoonies 13
Scaup/dos gris 9
Redhead 1
Ringnecks 7
mallards 5
Pintail 2
Wigeon 3

212 ducks for regular season on 27 hunts, 236 with Sept teal season included

Specks 1 (thanks D. Comeaux!)

Though breaching the 200 mark is generally indicative of a "good" season for us given a typically standard number of hunts, it's a bit misleading in that we killed most of our birds away from our usually-productive public stompin' grounds. Hunts in Delacroix area were very productive on grays and also had some productive hunts as a guest in SW La that contributed to the total. Our local grounds were just flat off with grays never showing in the droves we're accustomed to and holding in the usual locations. Though we did see a number of them on one hunt a couple weeks back, we'd often see big numbers holding in multiple areas, areas that were flat out devoid of grays most of the season. Also the divers didn't really take to our area either, usually at least see more redheads and dosgris. Green wing teal harvest is way down, another species typically very well represented in our local marsh but they were nearly completely absent for the season. The majority of the 37 taken were from SW La hunts and a few in Delacroix. Also noteworthy is that we did not kill a mallard in our local marsh. Saw a fair many here and there, could likely have made more of an effort to target them in small holes but that's typically not something reliable enough to focus on other than by off chance. Enjoyed sharing the blind with some new faces and hope to continue with that next season, thanks to those who put up with me for a morning or two.

Had a great time adding Harry to our hunt crew and his nose saved us more than his share of birds over the course of the season and saved me a fair bit of paddling. Hoping to keep working with him in the off season to sharpen him a bit for the 2016 season.

[Deltaman]

Crunched the end of season numbers broken down by species below:

Green wing teal 37 (down from 61 last year)
Blue wing teal 37 (24 from early teal season)
Grays 118* (up from 80 last year and 29 in 2013 season)
Mottleds 4
Spoonies 13
Scaup/dos gris 9
Redhead 1
Ringnecks 7
mallards 5
Pintail 2
Wigeon 3

212 ducks for regular season on 27 hunts, 236 with Sept teal season included

Specks 1 (thanks D. Comeaux!)

Though breaching the 200 mark is generally indicative of a "good" season for us given a typically standard number of hunts, it's a bit misleading in that we killed most of our birds away from our usually-productive public stompin' grounds. Hunts in Delacroix area were very productive on grays and also had some productive hunts as a guest in SW La that contributed to the total. Our local grounds were just flat off with grays never showing in the droves we're accustomed to and holding in the usual locations. Though we did see a number of them on one hunt a couple weeks back, we'd often see big numbers holding in multiple areas, areas that were flat out devoid of grays most of the season. Also the divers didn't really take to our area either, usually at least see more redheads and dosgris. Green wing teal harvest is way down, another species typically very well represented in our local marsh but they were nearly completely absent for the season. The majority of the 37 taken were from SW La hunts and a few in Delacroix. Also noteworthy is that we did not kill a mallard in our local marsh. Saw a fair many here and there, could likely have made more of an effort to target them in small holes but that's typically not something reliable enough to focus on other than by off chance. Enjoyed sharing the blind with some new faces and hope to continue with that next season, thanks to those who put up with me for a morning or two.

Had a great time adding Harry to our hunt crew and his nose saved us more than his share of birds over the course of the season and saved me a fair bit of paddling. Hoping to keep working with him in the off season to sharpen him a bit for the 2016 season.

Very respectable numbers Darren, as well as variety! Thanks for sharing your season with us

[Rick]

I'm wit' him.