WaterfowlForum.Net

Date: 10/26 - Special Youth and Veterans Hunt

Time: Morning

Location: Blind #13

Cloud Cover: Foggy to start but clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: Not even a breath of wind

Temperature: 65 warming to 80

Special Notes: 2024 Youth & Veterans hunt

Waterfowl Activity: Good numbers of birds flying around. Teal early and gadwalls later. For the first hour birds were coming from every direction and kids had a hard time getting on them in time. If this was the "real" opener we would have been finished inside of an hour. Hope they stick around for another week.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Given fog and no wind, birds were surprisingly eager to come into the hole. I think we were sitting in their home for the last couple of weeks.

Hunters: 3 kids plus one veteran dad; John and I were the gunless guides

Malfunctions: None

Dog(s): Jake

Special Equipment: 3 spinners and 2 wonder duck swimmers

Curses: Evaporation has not been our friend. Good news is that the shallow water has killed the lily pads that were getting pretty thick by the end of teal season. Bad news is that we are down to <6" of water in the pond and it is reducing the amount of SAV. With no meaningful rain in the forecast and the bayou at 7000 ppm of salt, we will be buying some water from the canal company for this unit as well as several other fields.

Kudos: Grant shot his first "big duck", a gadwall, and was so excited that he made me call off Jake so that he could retrieve it himself

Lagniappe: Good times were had fishing after the hunt. Everyone caught something.

Birds By Species: 13; 4 bw teal, 2 gw teal, 1 pintail, 5 gadwall, 1 coot

Success! Looks like a fine time was had.

I looked it up a few days ago and found that our last meaningful rain was on September 6th. Got darn near a half inch...

That's wonderful, congrats to all !

Awesome!!

Rick wrote:Success! Looks like a fine time was had.

I looked it up a few days ago and found that our last meaningful rain was on September 6th. Got darn near a half inch...

We are in similar shape. We got ~20" in July and ~10" in August. Picked up a couple of inches the first week of September and then not a drop since then. Only good news is that I've got a couple of water system maintenance projects that I am going to knock out since there is so little water in the canals.

Looks like a great start to what we hope is a great season

Good job dad

Date: 11/2 - 2024-2025 Season Opener

Time: Morning

Location: Blind #13

Cloud Cover: Cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: 10 mph East

Temperature: 65 warming to 80

Special Notes: 2024-2025 season opener

Waterfowl Activity: Not nearly the numbers that we saw the previous weekend during the youth hunt but enough to keep it interesting.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Everything seemed to want to land out at the edge of the decoys. I blame this on the clouds. Couldn't get the gadwall to give us much of a look at all.

Hunters: 5 - Me, David, Will, Ryan, Ryan's friend

Malfunctions: None

Dog(s): Jake - Ducks skirting the edge of a wide decoy spread and the return of wind led to some long cripples which Jake handled very well.

Special Equipment: 3 spinners and 2 wonder duck swimmers

Curses: None

Kudos: None

Lagniappe: Nothing

Birds By Species: 24; 15 bw teal, 6 gw teal, 2 ring neck, 1 gadwall

I find gadwall have become very skittish over the years. I really don't think we're getting as many young birds down here as we once did.

There are two kinds of gadwall that I seem to run across. The 630 to 7 am gadwall, which is absolutely suicidal, and the 9 am gadwall, which I’m convinced even sleeps while it flies. Never landing.

Good Start!

Duck Engr wrote:There are two kinds of gadwall that I seem to run across. The 630 to 7 am gadwall, which is absolutely suicidal, and the 9 am gadwall, which I’m convinced even sleeps while it flies. Never landing.

As a gray duck/gadwall specialist, I'd agree. One other wrinkle I'd throw in from my own observation is 9 out of 10 times, when a single gadwall comes diving into the spread in the first 10-20 minutes of shooting time, it's a hen!

I've gotten frustrated watching a wad of grays circle me 10 times then leave, only to go 300 yards over and circle what I know to be a bunch of live ones on the water, circle 10 times and leave!

As far as Jrock's hunt and the skittish grays, though some swear by them for grays eating them up, my own observation is seeing more grays flare from spinners than eat them up, so the fact that you had three out may well have been a factor in play. Obviously the trade off is the teal eat them up so it's hard to pull them if you're seeing a lot of both species. Given we're often light on green wings but heavy on grays, we don't run spinners usually.

Nice start to the season Jrock75, and hopefully some weather will make the Gadwalls decoy a little better. Gadwalls are about the only game in town here. While we get a sprinkling of other ducks (except Mallards, they have pretty much disappeared in game bags here), we have to concentrate on the Gadwalls and the occasional Mottle. If you expect Gadwalls to be in the 30-40 yard range when choosing to shoot, good chance you won't most days

DComeaux wrote:I find gadwall have become very skittish over the years. I really don't think we're getting as many young birds down here as we once did.

It all depends on the day. Some days they are suicidal and some days they won't land within 100 yards of the spread. The sun sure seems to make a difference. I agree on the spinners. They are there for the teal. After a week or two I will stop using them except on sunny days.

Darren wrote:

Duck Engr wrote:There are two kinds of gadwall that I seem to run across. The 630 to 7 am gadwall, which is absolutely suicidal, and the 9 am gadwall, which I’m convinced even sleeps while it flies. Never landing.

To add to your anecdotal science, our first duck of the morning was a female gadwall that lit in the decoys.

We don't have as many grays as folks closer to the Gulf, but it sure seems like a goodly number of those we do see touch their toes and dive on the spinner before I shut it off, as is my norm for big ducks.

jrock75 wrote:

Darren wrote:

Duck Engr wrote:There are two kinds of gadwall that I seem to run across. The 630 to 7 am gadwall, which is absolutely suicidal, and the 9 am gadwall, which I’m convinced even sleeps while it flies. Never landing.

To add to your anecdotal science, our first duck of the morning was a female gadwall that lit in the decoys.

Yep, another data point on that observation, have seen it many many times.

Date: 11/10

Time: Morning

Location: Blind #14

Cloud Cover: Cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: 10 mph NE

Temperature: mid 70s

Special Notes: My partner in the farm finally took his son and a friend on a hunt. I think they had a good time.

Waterfowl Activity: Wow it was slow. Forecast called for ~1" of rain but we got 4.5" of rain at the farm on Saturday morning and >3" across most of the county. I was hoping to catch the green wings coming back south into the marsh after feeding in the newly flooded rice but apparently they chose to just stay up there.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: BWT and ringers were somewhat responsive, nothing else would even give us a look

Hunters: 5 - Me, David, Grant, David's son Jack and his son's friend Hughes

Malfunctions: None

Dog(s): Jake

Special Equipment: 2 wonder duck swimmers

Curses: This blind faces north and is tough on a north wind for shorter hunters to shoot over the back but rain forecasts, plans back in Houston at noon, and a desire to make sure the new boys had an easy hunt without boat, mud and blind issues made me hit the easy button and go back to this cush blind on the farm.

Kudos: None

Lagniappe: Nothing

Birds By Species: 5; 3 bw teal, 2 ring neck

Date: 11/9/2024

We had started buying canal company water for the last week and had taken about 25% of what I thought we would need but 4.5" of rain finally came and saved us. I strongly prefer free rainfall to $40/acre ft. canal company water. We had started buying water for the last week and had taken about 25% of what I thought we would need. With all this fresh water flooding the harvested rice, Grant and I took Saturday afternoon to play with our new toy. I loved our old Case 9370 but it was a money pit. This one will probably be one as well, but hopefully not for a few years. The auto-steer was amazing. Crossing all the combine ruts would have beaten me up steering but this just holds the line.

How much more fun could a kid have!?? Or an adult playing on a big toy !?

Darren wrote:How much more fun could a kid have!?? Or an adult playing on a big toy !?

Indeed.

Darren wrote:How much more fun could a kid have!?? Or an adult playing on a big toy !?

Stubble rolling is so very satisfying. I had the best time and can't wait to hop back in the seat. This is the culmination of a lifetime fascination with farming equipment that started when I was a little kid visiting my grandfather's family's historical farm down in Elton, LA.

Oh how I would love this. I miss my time in Gueydan.

Darren wrote:How much more fun could a kid have!?? Or an adult playing on a big toy !?

Only difference between dad and boy hobbies is the size and price of their toys!

Duck Engr wrote:

Darren wrote:How much more fun could a kid have!?? Or an adult playing on a big toy !?

Only difference between dad and boy hobbies is the size and price of their toys!

That's it! What a wonderful task to share with a son.

Date: 11/15

Time: Evening

Location: Rolltop Blind

Cloud Cover: Sunny and clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: SSE 5 -10

Temperature: mid 70s

Special Notes: Fortunate to make a bonus 1-hour afternoon hunt on Friday after doing some burning and water control maintenance. Had kid commitments on Saturday morning and a family reunion in Lafayette on Sunday so my weekend was cooked otherwise.

Waterfowl Activity: The plan was to go to the field that Grant and I rolled last weekend and pump out the blind and bring decoys and maybe sneak in an hour hunt. When we initially arrived at the north side of the field, I was dismayed because I noticed that we had lost almost all of our water to a leak somewhere. My mood changed pretty quickly as we ran down the east side of the field to the blind levee where we saw 1,000+ ducks boiling up out of the field.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: We ended up just sitting on the levee and probably stuck out a bit even with decent cover. The ducks clearly wanted in the field but the big groups just wouldn't finish as well as I thought. We could have shot way more than we did early on but I didn't want to spoil the show as we had so many groups of different species flying around.

Hunters: 3 - Me, Steve, Justin (Steve's boss)

Malfunctions: Couldn't get the pump or decoys to the blind because I stuck the ranger 5 yards into the field. Fortunately I pushed it out relatively easy but I should have known better.

Dog(s): Jake

Special Equipment: 1 dove mojo

Curses: We couldn't shoot and almost ran out of ammo because in the rush to get out there I grabbed 20 gauge shells.

Kudos: None

Lagniappe: Nothing

Birds By Species: 10 ducks (5 gadwall, 2 mottled ducks, 1 pintail, 2 bw teal) plus 1 specklebelly

That's always good to see, the ducks that is. Nice hunt. Do you guy's have nutria rats, or was there something else causing the breach?

Sounds like your "hour" on the levee was the kind of time that keeps your heart racing, and your head swiveling!
Great report Jrock

DComeaux wrote:That's always good to see, the ducks that is. Nice hunt. Do you guy's have nutria rats, or was there something else causing the breach?

No nutrias around here. This 115 acre field has a eight exterior drains in it where the risers are gone. The farmer builds small levees at the drains with tarps to control water. These all got cut before harvest to drain and our attempts to patch the cuts washed out. This is a field that we lease from the guys from whom I bought the rest of the farm so I am hesitant to invest money into improving the infrastructure until they will sell it to me.

Sure looks like they want it pretty bad!