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2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 11:36 amby Rick
The bug and I made some ag land scouting rounds this morning to little avail: only duck concentration located was in a crawfish pond still holding water where scads of mottleds and black-bellies blew out along with four, count 'em 4, bluewings. Even slipped back into a perennial hot-spot where I've shot a lot of preseason teal video and found nothing but a few shorebirds in flooded second crop despite some substantial buffaloed openings. Well, there were the deer flies...
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 11:57 amby DComeaux
When the guns go off around you you'll be covered, as usual. I've heard and read many reports and seen videos for this not to happen for you.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:20 pmby Darren
DComeaux wrote:When the guns go off around you you'll be covered, as usual. I've heard and read many reports and seen videos for this not to happen for you.
My money's on the above as well
Seems like there sure are a lot of "new" or "newER" outfitters in the region, all of which are all over social media with videos of birds on ag land.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 6:15 pmby Rick
Hope you guys are right. Know I saw six on our new 1,500 acres between Lake Arthur and Thornwell this afternoon.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 8:39 amby Darren
Rick wrote:Hope you guys are right. Know I saw six on our new 1,500 acres between Lake Arthur and Thornwell this afternoon.
Sounds like a solo limit for ya! All is well
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 11:41 amby Johnc
There are not birds here like social media leads you to believe
Rick will kill because he always does with birds retreating to the marsh
Having birds means they completely fill up your field of sight when they erupt,otherwise that’s called having a few birds
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 3:01 pmby Rick
Finally saw teal over (way over) our marsh this morning. Three 30-40(?) bird flights headed south to Dave's place.
Got the mudhole ready for whatever business we get to do:
025a.jpg
Could be a replay of 2017's teal season, which was flat ugly...
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 3:26 pmby MARSH BEAR
Rick - you have a full crew to guide this weekend??
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:07 amby BGkirk
MARSH BEAR wrote:Rick - you have a full crew to guide this weekend??
does your dog see any retrieving time during teal season?
How about you rick? I know you do some chauffeuring
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Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Mon Sep 16, 2019 3:55 amby Rick
BGkirk wrote:MARSH BEAR wrote:Rick - you have a full crew to guide this weekend??
does your dog see any retrieving time during teal season?
How about you rick? I know you do some chauffeuring
I generally keep him away from deep water unless I'm
right there with the boat. But have to have him with us to recover what falls on the flotant (which, knock wood, gators aren't going to be hunting).
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Mon Sep 16, 2019 3:58 amby Rick
MARSH BEAR wrote:Rick - you have a full crew to guide this weekend??
Didn't mean to blow off your question but couldn't get onto this site until now. Had all we could handle for the weekend, but expect relatively slow teal bookings following a generally slow weekend for many.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:16 amby Rick
Six more weeks of "preseason," ugh.
Picked up teal stuff, denuded and buttoned up the blind and got a start on big season preparations by poisoning some canes trying to return between the east spinner and preferred teal water south of Clyde's blind and weed-ate some big "eat-out" holes for speck decoys on the west end of the blind island, south of the blind and on the pond's east "shore". Not that speck spots will count for pecans if we don't see any more of them than the past couple seasons.
(John may be interested to hear that I plan to abandon my decades long "If they're flying with blues, they're going to act like blues." pessimism and really get after the specks in mix flights this season, after spending a morning last February between a body of specks and a body of mostly blues and watching a fair number of specks in mixed flights headed to the blues segregate themselves and land with the specks-only bunch. 'Course, my "bunch" will be a couple hundred shy of the one those birds chose, but "we'll see..." )
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:26 amby Duck Engr
If ya ain’t swingin, ya ain’t hittin. Look forward to seeing your results on the specks this year.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 9:55 amby Rick
Would be nice just to see enough geese to get some feel for whether something's working or not.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:27 amby Johnc
To be honest sometimes the ones that break out of blues and come are easier to deal with then the speck only groups
They tend NOT to get hung between the main group leaving and the blind
Unlike the ones you break from the back or last couple in a flight group of specks,man it takes some convincing to separate them from the departing other birds
You don’t always get a bite on the ones mixed with blues but they are worth trying especially in the sun
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:40 amby Johnc
I tend to think now anything away from what the industry is doing may be worth trying
Whether running a big standing spread or like Rick’s marsh set up—-it can’t hurt anything
The birds are so educated by the time they hit us,maybe outside the box thinking helps.
As long as you stay well hid and have realistic decoys set in a realistic grouping,Realistic water level in my case or use something to make the water level look right—-conduit or long staked cut with wire cutters. Higdon does sale 30 inch stakes that can be cut
And I think I saw extra long ghg stakes on prairie wind decoy site.
I run my stakes down far into mud. Try to keep those decoys straight erect. No leaning
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:45 amby Johnc
As far as length. For us. 22-24 inches of stake length usually works and keeps me from having to “re set” things from big wind or a good rain
Now flooding rain. Yes I have to do a round up and reset
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 2:03 pmby Rick
My stakes are super simple home-growns out of 1/4" steel rod:
011a.jpg
The bend makes them easy to push in or pull out, as well as hook the decoy's bungee. Can be cut to any desired length to keep the decoys looking knee deep in water regardless of its depth, though the one pictured is a dry or puddled field cut.
Out at the mudhole, I'll sink a 3' length of 3/4" pvc down into the flotant and drop the stake down into that, which keeps them vertical all season:
026a.jpg
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 4:28 pmby Johnc
They sit just right
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 02, 2019 9:06 pmby Johnc
I could just see an eagle head or two with them
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:59 amby Rick
Me, too. Back when I'd run a mess of G&H speck shells, there was always an alert adult blue and a feeding snow with them for color and luck.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:35 pmby DComeaux
I took this from Bill Daniels Facebook page and thought you might like this read.
Sam Leatherman
October 2, 2017
This season is the 14th season I have been a professional guide or with a hunting organization. Whether I'm hunting for myself or guiding clients I am hunting for large mature animals to harvest...except this time, this week I let my client shoot a small immature buck.This time my client was a 72 year old man named Dick. Dick has hunted all over the country in his lifetime and harvested some truly remarkable animals, but this time was different. This was Dicks last deer hunt and possibly last hunt ever. His 5 day hunt was shorten to 3 days because his body just couldn't handle the mountains anymore, as we sat in the truck waiting for the defroster to clear the ice from the windshield he looked and me and said "Sam this may be my last day I ever hunt, let's have fun". I smiled.
Mid morning we saw a buck heading to bed and Dicks eyes lite up in a way that I have seen hundreds of times, guiding over the years. Once I got a good look at the deer I instantly knew this buck was too small and young and that in a couple years it could be a giant, that's what my eyes and mind saw. My soul however saw something completely different, my soul saw an old man sitting beside me doing what he loves one last time, a man that some day each of us will become as we long to experience the success of a hunt one last time. As the deer bedded down and Dick asked me what I thought I spoke from the soul and not from the mind..."let's see if we can get a shot".
Hours later I watched tears stream down Dicks face and turn to sobs as he touch a buck he had harvested, for the last time.
As we packed the buck out, my shoulders burning from the weight of the buck on my back I never turned around to check how the guys behind me where doing, I didn't want them to see the tears coming down my face. As I hiked with Dicks last buck on my back I silently prayed that God will always keep me humble as someday I too will have my last hunt, and secondly that when I am old and on my last hunt that some young whippersnapper guide will let me shoot a young buck just to have that feeling one more time.
Here's to you and your last buck Dick, a heck of a buck it is.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 5:46 pmby Rick
That's how it should be. Thanks for sharing.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 7:33 amby MARSH BEAR
That was a great story, I can relate to that story because I can see that day is coming for me in the not too distant future.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:40 amby Rick
Best part of last evening's Jr. High football game was hearing a reliable report of specks showing west of town, so the bug and I went that direction for our morning constitutional and ran into these characters on our new farm there:
115a.jpg
Maybe three times that again on the ground, and I got to call a small flight back around to a man in jeans and a light gray t-shirt kneeling on a grass road beside a big dog. Still mighty tame, as the birds on the ground let us
walk past them twice at maybe 100yds. Perhaps in part because there appeared a good number of young birds in the mix:
109a.jpg
Also moved a wad of blue-wings from some flooded second crop and missed a photo op at perhaps 30 pintails passing low overhead. Hadn't fooled with the camera since taking this shot I'd long forgotten was even on it of little drake that lit while I was picking up September teal decoys:
008a.jpg
and it shows in today's photos. Need to get back in the habit of carrying and using it.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:47 amby DComeaux
SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:54 amby Duck Engr
“Good number of young birds”
Hallelujah
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:40 pmby Darren
Duck Engr wrote:“Good number of young birds”
Hallelujah
Certainly does not appear to be many barred up cats in that crowd. In some way reassuring that a flight of young-of-the-year birds came all the way down here.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 1:27 pmby DComeaux
Darren wrote:Duck Engr wrote:“Good number of young birds”
Hallelujah
Certainly does not appear to be many barred up cats in that crowd. In some way reassuring that a flight of young-of-the-year birds came all the way down here.
I'm pretty sure the parents and older siblings will show them the ropes as soon as the first shotgun goes off. Pack it up, head on out, away from the thirty seven man blinds.
Re: 2019-2020 Preseason
Posted:
Wed Oct 09, 2019 1:59 pmby Ericdc
DComeaux wrote:Darren wrote:Duck Engr wrote:“Good number of young birds”
Hallelujah
Certainly does not appear to be many barred up cats in that crowd. In some way reassuring that a flight of young-of-the-year birds came all the way down here.
I'm pretty sure the parents and older siblings will show them the ropes as soon as the first shotgun goes off. Pack it up, head on out, away from the thirty seven man blinds.
I haven’t seen a blind down there that’ll hold more than 4 men.
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