2017-2018 Preseason

[Capttrae]

Man you gotta try the duck huntin on Gantt lake down in Andalusia!! It's awesome!! Seriously though, if you take a mind to try to shoot a few wood ducks and short on time Gantt is close to you, 30-45mins. Hunting isn't that great but it'll help scratch the itch.

[Rick]

Alabama duck hunting was once explained to me by a couple absolutely great old boys from Andalusia and Brantley as "...pass shooting wood ducks for 15 minutes after sunset. If the wardens didn't let folks slide those 15 minutes, there wouldn't be any Alabama duck hunters, but shooting beyond that would be abusing their good nature."

That their group referenced several common-to-us species as "pond ducks" was explained by their largely Gantt Lake (where one had a camp) experience: "Mostly we just see wood ducks and everybody knows about green-headed mallards, but we know a lake called Pintail Lake, so someone must of seen one of those there. There's so few other kinds come by that we just call them all 'pond ducks'."

Have turkey hunted their Crenshaw County woods and found it beautiful country that's home to some wonderful folks.

[Rick]

By the time my tailbone gets sore from sitting on the stand it's time to saddle my horse and run the English pointers.

It's all put-and-take quail for him and his now, but my Brantley friend has told some great stories about and from trial pros he'd known but I'd only read about.

[Capttrae]

By the time my tailbone gets sore from sitting on the stand it's time to saddle my horse and run the English pointers.

It's all put-and-take quail for him and his now, but my Brantley friend has told some great stories about and from trial pros he'd known but I'd only read about.

I grew up hearing my dad and granddad talk about how the quail hunting used to be. They used to kill a pile of them.

[aunt betty]

There used to be quail around here long ago.
The last time I ate quail I had to buy some farm birds to train the dog on.
Tasty lil buggers.

[aunt betty]

Was training "Buddy Lee" around ten or fifteen years ago.
Bought a dozen and hunted them. I think we lost 3 or 4.
My wife thought I was nutty to pay money for training birds then eat them.
I enjoyed every bite.

[Rick]

Yeah the wild quail is a thing of the past. We have a couple of coveys every year survive the summer into next season, leaving us with one or two "wild" coveys. When we get into those, we typically don't even shoot. We put birds out in October after the first frost and hunt them thought the season. It's not put and take exactly, tho we are putting the hawks do more taking than we ever do.

Used to get to hunt a private place in GA that supplemented with September releases, and by the time I'd get to go in February, you had to have them in hand to tell the difference (banded and, at least in my experience, a bit larger than his wild ones). Often ran like the dickens and flushed way wild if they caught us coming. More Ricky Bob than Gentleman Bob. (Just like the wild birds that once helped convince me to stay in Louisiana.) But my GA host spent serious money on their habitat.

[aunt betty]

My dad was a freak about quail. After he handed me a copy of Robert Ruark "The Old Man and the Boy" it was obvious why.
We had Brittany spaniels. His favorite named Mitsy lived to be 27 years old. Vets kept asking us how. Mitsy was babied from the day she came home.

[Rick]

He did feed, per se, to help keep birds along his "courses," but I suppose the breakdown would depend on how you viewed a lot of it, IE: are Egyptian wheat patches feed, habitat or predator control? I'd call them "habitat," others might say "feed,"and he valued them most as cover from avian predators.

He was proud of their work in getting state ground predator laws relaxed from where they once were, but didn't mention any extensive or presumably expensive effort to eliminate them, more "catch as catch can". Avian predators were, of course, a dark subject, but he worked with the biologist who developed the Covey Base Camp (who I met but have forgotten the name of) and had gosh knows how many of those scattered about for transition feeding cover after the September releases, as well as gosh knows how many more well camouflaged sets of old mattress springs for overhead cover in the more open pines. Like crops intended for cover as well as feed, I'd call those cover devises "habitat" but wouldn't quibble with "predator control".

And what was the seemingly omnipresent micro-chip whistling of call boxes intended to help keep the fruits of his investment from flying off his thousands of acres to benefit someone else if not "habitat".

In any event, he was paying a lot of folks to spend a ton of his money managing a whole lot of land for sole purpose of keeping birds on it to entertain he and his quests. And I was a fish out of water in the company of men who complained about how many times they had to get down off a horse to shoot wild birds at the really good places like Ichauway.

[Ericdc]

Was a bit of an eventful summer for me as I took a new job in Troy, Alabama and moved from Mobile. Definitely put me behind on boat projects of which I have completed exactly zero (new hubs on boat trailer, new fuel line up to the gas tank in the front, etc).

Good thing is I'm now 45 minutes from our land just north of me so I'll be making much more frequent trips. Have already worked a few weekends up there trying to prep dove fields although it has been weeeeeeet. Can't recall a summer with this much rain. We just got the the last of the dove field planted on Wednesday so our shoots will likely be pushed back a month which is fine by me because the weather is nicer.

Speaking of rain, we had another levee washout due to 13" of rain in two days back in January. Can't catch a break with these storms the last two years. Only designed the pond drainage system for ten year rainfall frequencies thinking certainly we'd have a year or two to let the levees settle and grass take root in our emergency spillways but we've been "blessed" by 100 year rainfall events in back to back years that have washed us out two years in a row. Now this summer has been too wet to dream of getting the dozer back in there. we were about fed up with it anyway so the year off will be good for us.

Also got into a pit lease out west this year so that has added a whole different dimension to our hunting. We've been river hunters the past few years but decided to have a backup for when there's low water or ducks aren't using the river or just somewhere to squeal at a few geese in the afternoons. The pit sent us into a decoy frenzy (though we already have plenty between the 5 of us). When the dust settled I'm now the owner of 3.5 dozen new decoys to go with my 6.5 dozen I already had. I'm currently in the process of switching all of my decoys over to Texas rigs and rigging the new ones.


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Where is out west?


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[Ericdc]

East central Arkansas.


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Sweet! nearest town?


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[Ericdc]

I believe Waldenburg will be our nearest town. Really haven't looked at closest hotels. I'm guessing Newport.


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Oh ok that's on up there a good ways.


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[Ericdc]

Yeah it's kind of right on the line between north and central so I never know how to describe it. You're down to the south, correct? Can't remember if it's north LA or south AR


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Northeast LA


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[aunt betty]

I believe Waldenburg will be our nearest town. Really haven't looked at closest hotels. I'm guessing Newport.


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Oh ok that's on up there a good ways.


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You need to look at Harrisburg. There is food and lodging there.
It's just about 10-15 miles east of Waldenburg.
You WILL end up at a store called Food Giant.
It's a hardware store, grocery, and sporting goods.
Just go there first when you get to Harrisburg.

By the way...Waldenburg is Northeast Arkansas pretty much. In the delta.
From the center of town it is on the north road out of town.
If you find the liquor store it is just north of that and on the opposite side of the street.

Waldenburg is not exactly a town but is a 4-way stop with a restaurant, a gas station, and an ice cream shop. There are some houses but it's more like a trailer park. (small) You can get burgers at the ice cream place I think. There is an old man that sets up a bar-b-que in a camper there on the 4-way stop on Fridays and Saturdays. Do NOT pass that up. His bar-b-que is excellent. It's called "Woody's BarBQ".
Buy some of his rib rub if you're into that. It's the best.
You can get the Woody"s Rubs at the Food Giant. (pretty sure)

If you would...would you mind if I gave you directions to Kenny McNeal's place. It's somewhat close to the 4-way stop.
Go piss on the hood of his truck and tell him Acorn sent you.
Sitzer Road.

Googled Woody's and it appears that they built a building in Weiner which is just north of Waldenburg. You'll drive thru that town if you're coming down Rt 49 from Jonesboro. Weiner is the former "Duck and Rice Capital of the World".
Stuttgart stole that title many years ago.

[Rick]

Bad news there, but the kind best delivered in your own driveway.

[DComeaux]

Yeah, that wouldn't be good on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of nowhere. Glad you made it to you destination.

[Deltaman]

WHEW!!!!!!!! Would've been a bitch on one of those back country roads for sure. Had to cut the inside ring off of an axle with a dremel tool a few years ago. Took a couple of those little round blades, but it got the job done