Regular Season

[jrock75]

Date: 10/26

Time: Morning

Location: Blind #14

Cloud Cover: Mostly Sunny

Wind Direction and Velocity: Very little initially 5-10 NW as morning progressed

Temperature: 70s-80s

Special Notes: 2025 Youth Weekend

Waterfowl Activity: Much slower than I expected. I was at the farm on Wednesday getting the blind ready and we had hundreds of mottled ducks in this field plus teal everywhere. We had two big lines of thunderstorms roll through Friday and Saturday nights dropping 2" of rain. Birds must have left for the new water. Only saw one group of non-mottled "big ducks." Hopefully the front this week pushes some down or opening weekend will be Teal Season 2.0.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: The blue wings we did see played it right. If the dads were shooting we could have made a pretty nice pile.

Hunters: 4 dads with 4 boys (11-13); me, David, Alex, John and Grant, Jack, Hughes, and Oakes

Malfunctions: None

Dog(s): Jake

Special Equipment: 2 spinners

Curses: None

Kudos: None

Lagniappe: It is really nice to have a hunt solely focused on the boys.

Birds By Species: 14 bw teal

Youth Hunt.jpg

[Darren]

Hard to beat that !

[Rick]

Thank goodness for blue-wings.

[Darren]

Fearing weather coming is going to blow out a lot of holdover blue wings the southern end of flyway is hanging on to, sure hope some others backfill.

[Deltaman]

Looks like the boys had plenty of action despite the big duck blowout! Congrats dad

[jrock75]

Date: 11/1

Time: Morning

Location: Blind #14

Cloud Cover: Sunny, then Cloudy, then Partly Cloudy

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE 5-10

Temperature: 60s

Special Notes: 2025 Opener

Waterfowl Activity: Slow except for mottled ducks which are off limit in Texas the first week of the season. We lost our ducks at the farm. Apparently to the marsh as our marsh blinds, which had a poor teal season, all did really good.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Not good. We couldn't get the big groups of teal to come in right to get the boys good shots. They would swoop in out of nowhere behind us but that was it. No landing, no banking and coming back, etc.

Hunters: 6 (Me, Grant, Will, Steve, Jack, Mark). Mix of dads, sons, and grandson.

Malfunctions: None

Dog(s): Jake

Special Equipment: 2 spinners

Curses: We need to make a larger hole behind the blind so that the ducks have an easier approach on a north wind. I intended to do so 2 weeks ago, but stuck the tractor and roller in another field and am now gun shy about putting it in this unit which has our worst soil. We can use the marsh master, but at 8' wide and 3 mph takes forever to do a hole of any size. Also I hit a deer on the drive in late after Trick-or-Treating. Truck is drivable but barely. Hate the idea of it sitting in the shop for most of the season. May just cut off some pieces and deal with it in February.

Kudos: Really nice weather. Dry north wind. Cool temps. No mosquitoes

Lagniappe: None

Birds By Species: 4 (3 BW teal, 1 Spoon)

[Duck Engr]

“Cut off some pieces and deal with it in February” man if that’s not a duck hunter’s line, I don’t know what is!

[Darren]

Love that attitude toward the truck situation but hate to hear you've got that to deal with. What came of the deer?

Did the marsh presumably bang on blue wings? Saw some straps that had green wings in some parts of Texas.

[jrock75]

Love that attitude toward the truck situation but hate to hear you've got that to deal with. What came of the deer?

Did the marsh presumably bang on blue wings? Saw some straps that had green wings in some parts of Texas.

Both blues and greens though the pics and piles I saw had more blue than green. They also had some gadwall and pintail in the mix. We saw way more big ducks (mainly gadwall and high pintails) than we did last weekend during the youth hunt but we just couldn't get them to give us a look. Hopefully they get banged on in the marsh all week and find our farm a nice spot to rest until the weekend.

I don't know the outcome of the deer, but I centered it going at least 50 mph so I doubt it survived. I didn't look around for it in the dark. I have never seen a deer out there on the road or dead in the ditch. I am always worried about the hogs as you see them dead all over the place.

I am unemotional about cars/trucks. Just tools to haul me and my junk around. I just got this one last year after having the one before it for 16 years and the one before that for 12 years. I apologize to everyone for being a cause of high insurance costs: truck this year and a tree on my SUV and wife's car last year during the hurricane.